Dominance and Affection 9780300191707

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DOMINANCE AND AFFECTION

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DOMINANCE «^AFFECTION THE MAKINQ OF PETS

YI-FUTUAN

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

Copyright © 1984 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Sally Harris and set in Goudy Old Style type. Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tuan, Yi-Fu, 1930Dominance and affection. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Dominance (Psychology) 2. Love. 3. Kindness. 4. Interpersonal relations. 5. Pets. 6. Environmental psychology. I. BF632.5.T83 1984 152.4 84-3691 ISBN 0-300-03222-6

Title.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. A portion of chapter four is reprinted, with permission, from Yi-Fu Tuan, "Dance, Waters, Dance," The Sciences, September-October 1983. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

That the most brutal of instincts should be the source of all civilization will not seem a paradox to anyone who understands what life is, —George Santayana, Dominations and Powers

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CONTENTS

Preface

ix

1. Introduction

1

2. Power and Dominance

7

3. Gardens of Power and of Caprice

18

4. Fountains and Plants

37

5. Animals: From Powers to Pets

69

6. Animal Pets: Cruelty and Affection

88

7. Children and Women

115

8. Slaves, Dwarfs, Fools

132

9. Dominance and Affection: Conclusions

162

Notes

177

Index

191 ILLUSTRATIONS

L The Pai Shih pavilion in the Pan Mou garden, Peking. From Osvald Siren, Gardens of China (New York: Ronald Press, 1949), pi. 36. 2. Garden depicted in a miniature of the fifteenth century. From Sir Frank Crisp, Medieval Gardens (New York: Hacker, 1966), fig. 102. 3. The great stones of Shih Tzu Lin (Lion Grove) in Su-chou. From Osvald Siren, Gardens of China, pi. 33. 4. The massive fountains devised by Orazio Olivieri for the Villa d'Esté at Tivoli. Redrawn by Wayne Howell from Miles Hadfield, The Art of the Garden (New York: Dutton, 1965), 10. 5. Engraving of the great Machine de Marly. From Asa Briggs, Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979), fig. 8. vii

26 27 33 42 45

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ILLUSTRATIONS

6. The water trick over the bridge at the Fountain of Rome, Villa d'Esté. Photo courtesy of David R. Coffin. 48-49 7. Artificial May tree used at the Festival of Spring. From Sir Frank Crisp, Medieval Gardens, fig. 146. 52 8. Topiary art as envisioned by the mid-fifteenth-century monk Colonna. From Sir Frank Crisp, Medieval Gardens, fig. 143. 54 9. A winged dragon fighting a lioness in the garden of Duke Vicino Orsini at Bomarzo. Redrawn by Wayne Howell from Miles Hadfteld, The Art of the Garden, 19. 56 10. The topiary garden at Levens Hall in Westmorland. From D. Clifford, A History of Garden Design (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), fig. 56. 58 11. An example of contemporary topiary caprice from the Green Animals Topiary Garden, Newport, Rhode Island. Courtesy of The Preset vation Society of Newport County. 59 12. The ancient art of dwarfing and twisting trees exemplified in a modern specimen. Redrawn by Wayne Howell from Maggie Keswick, The Chinese Garden (New York: Rizzoli, 1978), 38. 64 13. A "deer-shaped" tree in a modern Hang-chou garden. Redrawn by Wayne Howell from Maggie Keswick, The Chinee Garden, 54. 65 14. A second-century B.C. mosaic showing a Dionysian procession. From James Fisher, Zoos of the World (London: Aldus Books, 1966), 30. 73 15. Feeding animals in the London zoo. Cartoon by Richard Doyle in Punch, November 19, 1849. 81 16. Papuan mother nursing her child and a piglet* Photograph by Douglas Baglin from Alfred A. Vogel, Papuans and Pygmies (London: Arthur Barker, 1953), facing p. 24, 94 17. The Telescope goldfish. Redrawn by Wayne Howell from Maggie Keswick, The Chinese Garden, 40. 97 18. The Lionhead goldfish. Redrawn by Wayne Howell from G. F. Hervey and Jack Hems, The Goldfish (London: Faber and Faber, 1968), 65. 97 19. A Punch cartoon showing a dignified Victorian footman having difficulty with his leg stuffings. From Frank E. Huggett, Life Below Stairs (London: John Murray, 1977), 24. 140 20. Attributed to Johann Zoffany, Portrait of the Third Duke of Richmond Paul Mellon Collection, Upperville, Virginia. 143 21. Dwarfs in the court of Cosimo Medici; engraved by Jan van Straet after 1575. From E, Tietze-Conrat, Dwarfs and /esters in Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1957), fig. 70. 156 22. Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Queen Henrietta Maria with Her Dwarf, National Gallery of Art (Washington), Samuel H. Kress Collection. 158 23. A one-year-old Chinese shar-pei. Drawing by Wayne Howell. 170

PREFACE

This book is the most recent of a series of studies that I have undertaken in the last fifteen years to survey the broad themes of descriptive psychological geography. The first of these was called Topophilia (love of place), and it was followed by Space and Place, Landscapes of Fear, and Segmented Worlds and Self. In all of these works, my point of departure is a simple one, namely, that the quality of human experience in an environment (physical and human) is given by people's capacity—mediated through culture—to feel, think, and act. How people feel, think, and act are the central questions for me, which explains why all my efforts in recent years have a strong psychological anr1 philosophical bent. Thus, in the works cited, I have explored the nature of human attachment to place, the component of fear in attitudes to nature and landscape, and the development of subjective world views and selfconsciousness in progressively segmented spaces. And now, in this current work, I wish to explore the psychology of playful domination—a special exercise of power that has the effect of making pets. The word environment gives my efforts a geographical flavor and reflects my background in geography. Environment means "that which sur^ rounds." It is a broad and loose concept that happens to suit my purpose. I use the term to include not only nature (climate, topography, plants and animals) and man-made spaces, but also other humans. Finally, my approach is descriptive. Its aim is to point, collate, and clarify, to suggest possible ways of looking at the world anew, rather than to analyze, explain, and firmly conclude. The genre to which my writings belong is thus the essay. Essay means "the process of trying or testing,1' "an attempt," "a preliminary effort/' and even "meditation" (Francis Bacon). An essayist is a writer of short compositions rather than exhaustive treatises; in the eighteenth century he is "one who makes trials or experiments." Scholarship may be viewed as proceeding in two stages, each of which calls for a special talent. First is the essay, wherein facts and ix

x

PREFACE

ideas are imaginatively but also responsibly laid out and explored; then, if necessary, comes the further focusing on a particular problem and its detailed analysis. I believe that the social scientific understanding of human reality is flawed because too few scholars submit to the venture and discipline of the essay. Without this preliminary effort, research in compliance with a strict analytical methodology tends to become routine and sterile. Perhaps the most pleasant part of writing a book is to acknowledge one's gratitude to those colleagues and students who have extended help and encouragement. I am happy to acknowledge here my indebtedness to Hans and Maj Aldskogius, Richard Berris, Thomas Clayton, Wayne Howell, Helga Leitner, Richard Leppert, Roger Miller, Berta Peretz, Philip Porter, Glenn Radde, Michael Steiner, and Sze-Fu Tuan. I also wish to express my gratitude to the University of Minnesota for providing me with a sabbatical leave and a generous Bush Award, and to the University of Wisconsin for the offer of a position, which was a boost to my morale as I work on a topic that, however intellectually exciting, is also in its nature rather distressful.

DOMINANCE AND AFFECTION

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1 INTRODUCTION

Any attempt to account for human reality seems to call for an understanding of the nature of power. But if we use power as the key concept we build a picture of human reality that, for all its coherence and its ability to cover the facts, seems partial and distorted. Are people always trying, whether consciously or subconsciously, to dominate one another? Do they not also often cooperate? They do, although it can be argued that they cooperate only to dominate a third party—nature or human competitors. Is not love a social fact? It is. What role then does it play in human reality? To judge from the serious literature, fictional and scientific, love is not what " makes the world go around." In a pure state, it rarely appears even in serious fictional works except as a miracle or a momentary epiphany that has no lasting effect. In scientific literature, with the notable exception of the writings of Pitrim A. Sorokin,1 love is indeed an inadmissible four-letter word. A treatise on social disorders may use such words as passion, lust, and obsession, but the states of mind they denote and the interpersonal relations they imply can readily be subsumed under the concept of power and dominance. Obviously, neither passion nor lust is love in the sense, for instance, that Saint Paul uses the word in 1 Corinthians. It may be that love as conceived by Saint Paul and by other great religious leaders is too rarified and too rare to make an impact sufficient to command the attention of the social scientist and the novelist of the social scene. There remains affection. It undeniably exists and is, moreover, common enough to matter in the day-to-day maintenance of the world. However, affection is not the opposite of dominance; rather it is dominance's anodyne—it is 1

2

INTRODUCTION

dominance with a human face. Dominance may be cruel and exploitative, with no hint of affection in it. What it produces is the victim. On the other hand, dominance may be combined with affection, and what it produces is the pet. The effects of the exercise of power are everywhere and appear at different scales. In large and complex societies, perhaps the most striking effect is the transformation of nature. Forests are cleared and swamps drained to make way for human habitations. Trees are chopped down and rocks hewn to provide the raw materials of manufacture. Animals are harnessed to human service, consumed as food; their hide, fur, or feather are made into artifacts. This power to dominate nature was made possible by the invention of technical devices. One such device, before machines with moving wheels and levers were introduced, was the coordinated labor team—a machine made up of moving human parts. The existence of this human machine points to the fact that domination was exercised over people as well. People are killed or removed to make way for the habitations of the conquerors; people are enslaved to become a part of the functioning machinery of their master's household, commandeered to serve in a labor team or army and thus become a part of their master's armory of power.2 When objects stand in the way of the shakers and doers of the world, they are removed—unless they are perceived to have use and are so used. In either case, relationship to the object is impersonal. The lumberman bears no grudge against the forest, and the conqueror feels no hatred of a personal kind toward the conquered. Despite the horror of an act from the victim's viewpoint, the doer may not have been aware of his own cruelty because to him the victim has little or no interest and is barely a part of his visible landscape. A piece of timber that is made into a bench, an ox that is harnessed to a plow, a man that is turned into a tool—these are all acts of power directed toward practical ends. Power, however, can also be directed toward the ends of pleasure, adornment, and prestige. The objects that support these ends as distinct from those of a merely practical nature are regarded as valuable; they stand as visible elements in the landscape of the powerful; they are treated with favor, indulgently, as playthings and pets. In many societies a distinction is drawn between a world of work and a world of play. Work presumes necessity, play freedom. We have to work to earn a living, whether as hunter-gatherer, shoe salesman, or public

INTRODUCTION

3

official. But beyond work there may be time, energy, and resource left over for play, which is something we do freely. Power and dominance pervade the world of work. People at work are people trying to master nature and life, and if they have sufficient power at their command they can significantly alter their part of the earth. The world of play, by contrast, has an air of innocence. Power is exercised in play, but playfully, with no lasting effect. Games may be vigorously pursued but they leave no enduring trace on the earth. In sophisticated societies, this distinction between work and play finds a parallel in the more specialized distinction between an economic realm and an aesthetic or cultural realm. The former suggests struggle—the need to control and dominate; the latter, by contrast, has an air of civilized calm, as remote from the burdens of necessity as from the passions of power. There is no doubt that far more physical force is expended in the world of work than in the world of play, in the economic realm than in the aesthetic-cultural realm. However, if we think of power as a consciously felt possession and of the need to be master as a conscious need, then the distinction between work and play, economic activity and cultural activity is less clear. Consider a foreman at a construction site, with a couple of bulldozers at his command. Is he more a figure of power and dominance than an artist-gardener who, working with a few sharp tools and wires, "captures" wilderness and confines it to a glazed pot? Judging by the amount of earth moved, we would say that the foreman is, of course, a far greater figure of power. The foreman dominates nature, a judgment that we would not apply to the artist-gardener. And yet, from the standpoint of what an individual feels, it is not at all obvious that the foreman at the construction site feels more in control of his life and world than does the creator of miniature gardens of his. Indeed, we may argue that the artist-gardener is more a figure of power, more a person who wants to dominate his world. And the reason is that power, as a personal experience, must emanate from free will; and it is in the aesthetic-cultural realm rather than in the realm of practical affairs that the playful exercise of will is more likely to occur. Compared with men of practical affairs, gardeners alter the earth only a little. But they alter it. Other aesthetic activities, such as writing poems and painting landscapes, do not have any obvious direct impact on nature and society, but the impulse to reduce—and thereby, order and control— is there. A poet looks at nature and captures its essence in a poem.

4

INTRODUCTION

Something out there is taken into the human world, dressed in words and arranged in rhythmic order. Landscape painting is even more clearly a confident act of incorporation. Mountains and rivers—marvels of nature that far dwarf man—are caught by strokes of the brush on canvas or paper. Captive nature is then put in a frame, nailed to the wall of a house, there to be looked at and appreciated or to serve as a pleasing background (a touch of wildness) among the ordered events of social life. It cannot be mere coincidence that landscape painting emerged iri Renaissance Europe, a time when Europeans took great pride in their cities and in their power over nature, and effloresced in China during the Sung dynasty (960-1279), a time known for its unprecedented expansion in commercial and economic life. Power is subject to abuse. In the world of work this abuse is most strikingly manifest in the amount of damage done to nature and to people. Quantitative measures stand out: the thousands of acres of forest cut down to make way for roads, the thousands of humans enslaved to work in the silver or coal mines. In the world of play, the abuse of power is evident less in any quantitative measure of change as in the character of the change—in the ways that power has been used to distort plant, animal, and human nature for aesthetic ends, and in the ways that animals and humans—as pets and playthings—have been made to suffer indignities and humiliation rather than physical pain, curtailment of life, and death. And yet, there must have been pain in submitting to the excesses of training and disciplining; and as for the curtailment of life and death, we shall see in the following pages how great is the temptation for the powerful to reduce their pets (plants, animals, and humans) to simulacra of lifeless objects and mechanical toys—to the sort of frozen perfection that only the inanimate can attain. On the uses and abuses of power in the economic and practical areas of life, a very extensive literature already exists. On such exercises of power in the aesthetic-cultural realm, little has been written; and we have noted that one reason is our tendency to dissociate power and domination from the world of pleasure, play, and art. This dissociation is easy to make because of the element of delight in aesthetic activities. How can we be said to abuse a plant when we take pleasure in it, even if part of the pleasure lies in twisting the stem into the shape of an antelope? Is it cruelty to breed a variety of goldfish with dysfunctional bulging eyes if such fish

INTRODUCTION

5

are well cared for and fetch a high price? Was it right for a lady of eighteenth-century England to keep a black boy as a pet? She thought so, for did she not dress the boy in finery and allow him special privileges? Of course, some of us are now inclined to disagree, arguing that the boy's dignity was compromised by his pet status and even by his mistress's acts of favor and indulgence. Affection mitigates domination, making it softer and more acceptable, but affection itself is possible only in relationships of inequality. It is the warm and superior feeling one has toward things that one can care for and patronize. The word care so exudes humaneness that we tend to forget its almost inevitable tainting by patronage and condescension in our imperfect world. "Man's role in changing the face of the earth" is a popular theme in classrooms and scholarly treatises. It is concerned with power and domination; and man is the correct word because men, not women, have brought about nearly all the major changes for good and ill. Equally popular is the story of gardening, but literature on this subject appeals to quite a different class of readers. To them, gardening is an art form and has little to do with power play. In this book, I shall attempt to show that this is a mistaken view and that we fail to understand the nature of the pleasure garden unless we put power somewhere close to its center. The breeding and training of animal pets, the establishment of zoos, the story of the household servant and entertainer are other themes, each with its own specialized literature, each with its own clientele of readers, and all thought to be quite unrelated to the story of the garden. In this book, I shall show that this perception is incorrect. They are closely parallel themes, and none can be truly understood outside the context of the others. Moreover, all these themes can be put under the broad rubric of "man's role in changing the face of the earth." That which links them is power. What has happened to the innocence of gardening, of keeping pets, and even of the feeling called affection? Are they all now to be tarred by the same brush of power? Are they all tainted by the urge to dominate? Yes, but power and domination are manifest in different ways: some are innocent, even benignant, others are savage, though perhaps most are both necessary and infrangible composites of good and evil. In order to appraise the operations of power in the aesthetic-cultural realm, we need to see them against the background of power in all its ferocity and pervasiveness in other realms as well. Against this broad background, we

INTRODUCTION

may conclude that the making and maintenance of pets is, after all, a relatively innocuous occupation. It often benefits the master, less often and more arguably the pet, and it is in any case inescapable.

2 POWER AND DOMINANCE

Power in itself is good. It is another word for vitality and effectiveness, states of being that all animals want. We admire power whether it is manifest in nature, in ourselves, or in our works. A thunderstorm is sublime and commands respect. The sight of water surging effortlessly out of a spring gives us pleasure, as does that of an athlete vaulting over a high beam with consummate grace. Happiness is to feel our sports car responding to our touch with alert and unstrained power on a winding mountain road. Powerful is a term of high commendation in the world of art. Thus we say of a symphony, a painting, or a poem that it emanates power, that it is strong. On the other hand, feeble and weak are the severest words of condemnation in the critical lexicon; any serious artist would much rather that his work be judged ugly than weak. Yet power in Western society and particularly in our time has become a deeply suspect word. Mention it in social and political circles and we quickly envisage possibilities of abuse and corruption. Among artists the word arouses perhaps the least distrust. Despite the adage about poets being legislators to the world, they are more commonly viewed as figures of little power whose ability to change the world is limited to other people's passing moods and feelings. Like all makers, poets have to destroy in order to create, but what they destroy are merely pieces of paper, the loss of which is tolerable even if the completed poems should prove to be less than divine. In general, we take for granted that the finished artifact more than justifies the spoliation that precedes it. Every jug is superior to the clay from which it is made. The wonder of art derives

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at least in part from the perceived disproportion between material that is used up and material that is created; between a marble block removed from the flank of a Tuscan hill and Michelangelo's David. Humans have been reluctant to admit that the destructive act itself can give pleasure. It is not only that we have to break the egg to make an omelette; the breaking itself is pleasurable. Destruction is power—a dramatic way of being effectve. "To knock a thing down ... is a deep delight to the blood," says George Santayana.1 Parents will agree as they watch the first creative act of their infant, which is to knock down a pile of wood blocks. Infants are too ill-coordinated to put anything up, and it may be that they watch adults do so with envy; but they can always demonstrate their effectiveness by making a bowl of peas fly off the tray with a gleeful swipe of the arm. Children, even when they are old enough to make things, retain a fondness for destruction. "Many children find knives irresistible," Colin Wilson notes. To them, "a surface of tight leather seems almost to ask to be cut with a razor edge." This destructive impulse is the same kind as that which leads youngsters to build "elaborate reservoirs of sand, fill them with water, and then poke a small hole in one of the walls for the pleasure of watching the water sweeping them away."2 Adults are conditioned to repress the urge, and it is a rare individual who will confess it, as Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) has done: "The sight of a force which nothing can resist has always attracted me most powerfully—and I don't care if I myself or my best and dearest joys get drawn into its whirlpool. When I was a child—I remember it clearly—I saw a coach rolling through a crowded street, pedestrians scattering right and left, and the coach unconcerned, not diminishing its speed."3 "Who does not exult in fires, collapses, the ruin and death of friends?" John Updike asks.4 Maybe many of us do, but it is an inadmissible feeling. War, however, sanctions violence. In a traditional war, not everyone is a victim. To those who destroy and to those who watch the destruction as bystanders, the theater of war can provide physical release and sensualaesthetic delight. This conclusion is inescapable, says Glenn Gray, to "anyone who has watched men on the battlefield at work with artillery, or looked into the eyes of veteran killers fresh from slaughter, or studied the descriptions of bombardiers' feelings while smashing targets." As for sensual-aesthetic delight, "some scenes of battle, much like storms over the ocean or sunsets on the desert or the night sky seen through a

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9

telescope, are able to overawe the single individual and hold him in a spell/'5 History is full of gory accounts of pride in destruction—the pride of power. An outstanding early example is Sennacherib's boast of the total annihilation of Babylon. (Sennacherib [705-681 B.C.] was the son of Sargon and king of Assyria.) "The city and its houses from its foundation to its top, I destroyed, I devastated, I burned with fire. The wall and the outer wall, temples and gods, temple towers of brick and earth, as many as they were, I razed and dumped them into the Arakhtu Canal. I flooded the city's site with water and made its destruction more complete than that by flood."6 Destruction was a part of the process of creation—of the founding of a new city or civilization. This the Sumerians (but also the Assyrians and Romans) seem to have recognized. They felt the need to start with a clean field, with no vestige of defeated and vengeful spirits lingering over it. Moreover, the ancients—the Sumerians specifically—saw the establishment of civilization itself as involving not only order and lawful conduct but also evil (planned evil), falsehood, violence, and oppression. The Sumerian gods were essentially amoral, and the cities they had created partook of this amoral character at the core of their being.7 Life is power—a power that maintains itself and grows by incorporating others. Life is inconceivable without death and destruction. The mild M. Bergeret, a hero in Anatole France's novel Histoire contemporaine, says: "I would rather think that organic life is an illness peculiar to our unlovely planet. It would be intolerable to believe that throughout the infinite universe there was nothing but eating and being eaten."8 Ernest Becker invites us to contemplate the living spectacle of all that we have organismically incorporated in the course of a lifetime. What would it be like? "The horizon of a gourmet, or even the average person, would be taken up with hundreds of chickens, flocks of lambs and sheep, a small herd of steers, sties full of pigs, and rivers of fish. The din alone would be deafening."9 Eating is a necessary and pleasurable activity that simultaneously takes pleasure in the object consumed. Eating, in other words, is an expression of love. Love is devouring. What we love we wish to incorporate, literally and figuratively. In a moment of exuberance, Chekhov exclaimed, "What a luxurious thing Nature is! I could just take her and eat her up... I feel I could eat everything: the steppe, the foreign countries, and a good novel." Robert Browning said that he had such a love for flowers and leaves that,

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every now and then in an impatience at not being able to possess them thoroughly, he wanted to "bite them to bits."10 G. K. Chesterton confessed that in the Geological Museum certain rich crimson marbles, certain split stones of blue and green made him wish his teeth were stronger. W. N. P. Barbellion, reflecting on Chesterton's desire, concludes grimly: "There is no true love short of possession, and no true possession short of eating. Every lover is a beast of raven, every Romeo would be a cannibal if he dared."11 What is a magnificent civilization but one that has fed well on the resources of the earth? A distinguishing mark of civilization is extravagance—that voracious and seemingly insatiable appetite for the consumption and production of goods. Yet extravagance is not a word that comes most readily to mind when we contemplate society or civilization as a whole. That monumental pile of palaces and temples, theaters and parks, galleries and libraries, shops and emporiums, aqueducts and high' ways speaks of human achievement and is looked upon with pride. Why, in ancient Rome, did the bloody and expensive gladiatorial contests go on even when the Colosseum was half empty? What need was there for such entertainment? To go a step further, what need was there for the Colosseum itself? Few people dared to address these questions and pursue them to their logical ends because they would have cast doubt on the very grounds of civilization. Extravagance in individual life-style does arouse, from time to time, comment and disapproval. Only a modicum of sensibility is required to frown upon the man who stuffs himself with food, grows obese, and lives as it were in his own ample cask of fat, A body cannot carry too many jewels without exciting ridicule. Tolerance for extravagance at the scale of a house is greater, perhaps because the house, though privately owned, is also a feature of the public landscape. Critical voices are, however, occasionally heard. Just look at the bathhouses of certain former slaves, wrote Seneca to a friend: "Look at their arrays of statues, their assemblies of columns that do not support a thing but are put up purely for ornament, just for the sake of spending money. Look at the cascades of water splashing noisily from one level to the next. We have actually come to such a pitch of choosiness that we object to walking on anything other than precious stones."12 Extravagance of the kind denounced by Seneca is a commonplace of all civilizations. In seventeenth-century England, the duke of Norfolk had

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ten seats, "including one in the very center of the city of Norwich, castles in four English counties and Norfolk House in London. One earl had nine seats, and one baron had eight. No family could possibly occupy so many houses at any one time."13 Of course, these baronial mansions dominated the landscape and spoke eloquently of the power of their owners. How could the lords of the earth rule but by making their presence felt at all times? But this is not all. It seems to be in the nature of great power to go beyond practical politics and calculation. Power, if great, is free, extravagant, and whimsical. Why else would the fifth earl of Lonsdale give Lowther Castle 365 rooms? For that matter, why would one of the dukes of Bridgewater possess 365 pairs of shoes? Why is there a skating rink at Wentworth Woodhouse? Why did Lord Exeter need four large billiard rooms, and why were there twenty pianos at Woburn which nobody ever played?14 Human beings are themselves products of the earth that can be exploited and consumed in a variety of ways. When conquerors take over a country they have to decide what to do with the conquered. One extreme view sees the conquered simply as an unassimilable nuisance, like wild animals or tree stumps, to be wiped out. Another view, more sensible economically, sees the conquered as goods of varying value to be plundered. The wars of the ancient Romans reflected this latter view. 'They made war," as Bertrand de Jouvenal puts it, "for its immediate gains of precious metals and slaves: the more treasure and the more ravaged victims that followed in the consul's train, the more applauded his triumph. The essential feature of the relationship between the capital and the provinces was the gathering of tribute. The Romans regarded the conquest of Macedonia as marking the date from which it had become possible to live entirely off the taxes paid by the conquered provinces/'15 The nomads of central Asia, in an early phase of their conquest of their agricultural neighbors to the south, took the radical step of systematically slaughtering all the farmers and transforming their fields into pasture. A later solution, adopted under the nomads' leader Shih Lo in the fourth century A.D., called for the setting up of a military camp in the middle of China and then treating the whole country as a "hunting ground." Both strategies met with fierce resistance. The overrun Chinese could be neither eradicated nor plundered with ease. For the conquerors the one solution that had a chance of enduring success was to establish a government, based on the native model, empowered to collect taxes and draft

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labor in a systematic way. This solution treated the vanquished people as a resource to be widely used.16 Before the modern age, power meant primarily organized human power. Great cities and public projects were built with machines composed of human parts. Armies of people were sometimes employed. An inscription of the Han dynasty notes that the construction of a certain highway in A.D. 63 to 66 occupied 766,800 men. During the Sui dynasty, the Grand Canal (604-17) was built with the labor of one million men and women. Levies of this order severely disrupted farm life, causing widespread suffering even in a populous country. Deaths from sickness and accidents were commonplace. Clearly human lives counted for very little if they were those of peasants. From time to time, a cause of abuse was thought sufficiently flagrant to be recorded and thus enter history. Here is an example from the Northern Wei dynasty. The noblemen and high officials of the period considered it meritorious to build and endow Buddhist temples and houses. By A.D. 534, the city of Lo-yang had no fewer than 1,367 such establishments. One pious but ruthless official ordered the construction of 72 temples at great cost in human and animal lives. When a monk rebuked him, the official replied that posterity would see and be impressed by the buildings and would know nothing of the men and oxen that had perished.17 From Europe, to take one case out of many, is this grim account of the wasting of workmen during the construction of Versailles. On October 12, 1678, the marquise de Sévigné wrote: The King wishes to go to Versailles on Saturday, but God, it seems, wills otherwise, because of the impossibility of getting the buildings in a fit state to receive him, and because of the great mortality afflicting the workmen, of whom every night wagons full of the dead are carried out as though from the Hôtel-Dieu. These melancholy processions are kept secret as far as possible, in order not to alarm other workmen.18 Contact with power often ends in death. What was once alive becomes inanimate matter. Thus trees turn into tables and chairs, animals into meat and leather. In war, humans become corpses. Short of death, trees turn into potted plants, animals into beasts of burden and pets. And humans? Confronted by power, they become "animals" and "things" or playthings. How is the human subject expected to behave in the presence

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of his lord? In the extreme case of despotism, he falls forward on all fours like an animal, strikes his head on the ground, and kisses the dust. In ancient Hawaii, political power was sufficiently terrifying to make the commoners crawl before their rulers. In Inca Peru, even the highest dignitary approached his sovereign like an animal, his back bent as though under a load of tribute. In pre-Conquest Mexico, prostration before royalty was a form of etiquette taught in the so-called colleges. Kowtow was practiced in China from the early years of the Chou dynasty, around 1000 B.C. The importance of prostration in the Near East can be amply documented, says Karl Wittfogel. "The records of Pharaonic Egypt describe the whole country as 'prone upon the belly* before a representative of the king. Faithful subordinates are shown crawling, and kissing (or sniffing) the monarch's scent."19 The monarch or despot sits. Sitting, Elias Canetti suggests, denotes the power and dignity of duration. We expect someone who sits to remain sitting. The downward pressure of his weight confirms his authority. The despot sits on a chair, "which derives from the throne, and the throne presupposes subject animals and human beings, whose function it is to carry the weight of the ruler. The four legs of the chair represented the legs of an animal."20 In addition, guards stand stiffly by the ruler's throne. The stiffness suggests that guards are things—implements to be used. And before the ruler is the prostrate subject, a human person reduced to an animal in the presence of his lord. These ancient expressions of power and servitude now seem to us grotesque. Yet their vestiges still linger in our world. "Boot licking," as a figure of speech, is still in use. Malcolm Muggeridge reminisces: "Whenever I think of the inexhaustibly interesting subject—the incidence and exercise of power—there is one incident which always comes back into mind. It was long ago, in the early thirties. I was having a drink in a café in Vienna. My companion was a free-lance journalist of sorts, and a propos of nothing and quite casually and ruminatively, he remarked, 'I sometimes wonder if Pm licking the right boots.' "21 And Desmond Morris notes that in a modern Western metropolis, it is still possible for a man to sit on a throne and have his boots licked—that is, sit on a high chair and have his boots polished by a kneeling figure.22 Too often, the mass of humanity has been reduced to raw nature, and nature exists to be consumed by civilization for its glory. This glory, in a hierarchical society, is available only to the elect and consists in large part

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of luxury goods. What are luxury goods? Jean-Paul Sartre argues that luxury in its pure state exists only in aristocratic and agricultural societies. Luxury goods are essentially rare, natural objects. True, the products of nature have to be discovered, transported, and refined by people, and in the process they become artifacts. But Sartre contends that human labor itself, upon coming into contact with nature, is reduced instantaneously to a natural activity. "In the eyes of the rajahs, the pearlfisher did not differ much from the pig that noses out truffles; the labor of the lacemaker never made of lace a human product; on the contrary, lace made a lace worm of the lacemaker." The aristocrat, says Sartre, "eats Nature, and the product he consumes should smell a little of entrails or urine." To a man of taste, the authentic luxury good should have, beneath its ostentatious appearance, "the carnal, clinging, humble, organic milky taste of the creature." A machinemade lace can never be a satisfactory substitute for the real article because it cannot replacé the lacemaker's "long patience, the humble taste, the eyes that are ruined by the work."23 Even today, when there is great respect for the kind of perfection that only high technology can achieve, the true luxury good must still carry a hint of human sweat and the organic. Manufacturers of Waterford crystal, for example, advertise their product as "Fire born of fire. Blown by mouth and cut wholly by hand. With heart." Perhaps more familiar is the boast of Rolls-Royce: "In the rear seats, you can snap on personal reading lights, listen to the sound of stereo, or simply lean back, close your eyes and let the warmth of deep Wilton carpets, the beauty of hand-rubbed walnut veneers and the scent of rich Connolly hides remind you that you are in a private world. It takes at least four months to build such a motor car, because it is built by hand and built to last." Volvo, the Swedish automobile manufacturer, also emphasizes human labor in its advertisements. "Each body panel is carefully fitted by hand; each seam is hand-burnished..,. [And] the wood paneling is hand-polished to an elegant gloss." "Hand-burnished" and "hand-polished" suggest that it is the human oil and sweat, rather than wax or some chemical product, that give the panel its elegant sheen. Sartre's pearlfisher dives into the sea and comes up with a pearl which is then taken away from him because it is not his to dispose of. His role is rather like that of the cormorant, trained by the Chinese since the twelfth century to dive into the river for fish; a ring around the bird's neck prevents it from swallowing its catch. Humans are not only hands and

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beasts of burden, they are also quaint animals that the people in power may find amusing to play with. For example, early in this century, pedestrians passing over Hungerford Bridge used to throw coins into the fetid mud banks of the Thames River and watch the children of the poor dive into the mud to retrieve them. The children were known as mud* larks. A more civilized form of this game is for passengers on luxury liners to throw money into the clear and shallow waters near tropical islands and watch the natives, nearly naked and lithe like seals or porpoises, plunge in for their paltry reward. When people are treated like amusing performing animals, the line between condescension and sadistic taunt is thin. Healthy and young islanders who dive for coins may not feel humiliated; they may think of what they do as the day's work or even as fun. The passengers, on their part, may believe that they are simply combining charity with a bit of innocent pleasure. However, the structure of power that makes this game possible can lead to other games significantly less innocent. Consider the following story as told by eleven-year-old Theodore Roosevelt. During one of those grand tours of Europe that wealthy Americans were accustomed to undertake after the Civil War, the Roosevelt family came upon a group of Italian beggars. Young Teddy happily reported: "We tossed the cakes to them and fed them like chicken with small pieces of cake and like chickens they ate it. Mr. Stevens [a traveling companion] kept guard with a whip with which he pretended to whip a small boy. We made them open their mouth and tossed cake into it. We made the crowds give us three cheers for U.S.A. before we gave them cakes."24 Power is able to reduce humans to animate nature, and as such they can be exploited for some economic purpose or treated condescendingly as pets. From the viewpoint of power, however, animate nature remains imperfect. An animate being is imperfect because it moves and breathes, it has a biological rhythm to which it must defer, and it has a will of its own which can be made to cower but never can be totally defeated. For power to enjoy a supreme sense of control, humans must be reduced to something less than animate, to inanimate nature—to mechanical things. In varying degrees, civilizations have tried to provide their elites with this order of power in the realms of work, war, and pleasure. How humans become machines in the realm of work is a dark tale that is often told. To do heavy work such as lifting stone blocks, people must

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be organized into teams; their arms and legs must move in unison as though they are the levers and beams of a machine. To do complex work, especially if it is integrated with activities elsewhere, time must be rigidly structured so as to overcome those impulses and rhythms of biological life that do not synchronize with the needs of production. In Western Europe during the fourteenth century manufacturers (taking their cue from monasteries) began to use the bell to regulate the work schedules of their workers. Protests and uprisings against the Werkglocke were frequent, especially after bells pulled by hand were replaced by mechanical clocks that attempted to break the day down into twenty-four equal and exact parts. Jacques le Goff thinks "it might be possible to determine whether the location of the crisis-ridden textile industry coincided more or less with the region where mechanical clocks were to be found."25 The regulation of human activities by mechanical time, both that of the clock and that of the manufacturing machine, became more and more a feature of Western life and culminated in the factory line that ignored the physiologic needs of its human "cogs." But human workers lack the perfection of cogs; they have to go to the bathroom. The owners and supervisors of a factory, by their attitude and behavior, can make the workers feel that they are the weak and undependable parts of an otherwise beautifully running engine.26 In the military sphere, soldiers are instruments of war, part of a military machine, cannon fodder. In this sphere, the reduction of the human to the inanimate and mechanical is so extreme that the above characterizations of the soldier should not be taken as mere figures of speech. Traditional procedures in the training of soldiers resemble those used in the training of performing animals, but the ideal of precision goes far beyond what animals can achieve to that attainable only by machines. Marchers in a parade must be perfectly in step; the drill line is ideally ruler-straight. An incident reported by Piotr Kropotkin (1842-1921) perhaps best illustrates this ideal of inanimate perfection. In the reign of Nicholas I, Kropotkin observed, an admired military man was a person "whose soldiers were trained to perform almost superhuman tricks with their legs and rifles; and who could show on parade a row of soldiers as perfectly aligned and as motionless as a row of toy-soldiers. * Very good,' the Grand Duke Mikhael said once of a regiment, after having kept it for one hour presenting arms,—'only, they breathel* "21 In the sphere of pleasure, potentates have demonstrated their predilec-

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tion for extravagance not only in their richly adorned palaces and gardens and in their numerous servants (some of whom were full-time entertainers), but also—more rarely and hence less well known-—in a fondness for mechanical toys that simulate animate nature. Moth withstanding all the goods and services offered by living organisms, from the standpoint of potentates animate nature still lacks the predictability and the undemanding presence of inanimate matter. In the presence of servants and slaves, and even of pet animals, potentates remain aware—however marginally— that they are not the sole possessors of consciousness and will. Hence the satisfaction to be found in mechanical toys and mechanical servants. Consider the following two examples. (We shall refer to other cases later.) In the middle of the thirteenth century, a French artist-craftsman produced for the court of the Mongol Khan a large silver fountain in the form of a tree which delivered four kinds of drinks to guests through the mouths of lions and dragons placed among the leaves. At the top of the tree was a mechanical angel that could blow a trumpet. In this particular effort, however, the artist-craftsman's technical prowess failed to match his and his patron's aspiration. The arm of the angel could indeed move but only because it was manipulated by a hidden slave, and drinks flowed out of the fountains only because more slaves were hidden under the roof of the palace hall and from there poured liquors down long tubes. Why were the human servitors hidden? Why could they not have performed these simple tasks in the open? They could have, but from their master's point of view human servitors—by breathing, for example—lacked the timeless perfection of art objects. The second example is from China and dates back to the early years of the seventh century. For the entertainment of the Sui emperor (Sui Yang-ti) and his guests, large toy boats were constructed that floated on water in winding canals. On some of the boats were men made of wood. When a boat paused before a guest, one figure would stretch out its arm with a full cup of wine. When the guest had drunk, the figure received the cup back and held it for another figure to fill. Immediately the boat moved on to its next stop. Apparently all these movements were performed by mechanical devices without the subterfuge of hidden human agents.28

3 GARDENS OF POWER AND OF CAPRICE

" We are absolute masters of what the earth produces. We enjoy the mountains and the plains. The rivers are ours. We sow the seeds and plant the trees. We fertilize the earth. We stop, direct, and turn the rivers; in short, by our hands and various operations in this world we endeavor to make it as it were another nature."1 This view of human dominance, so boldly stated by Cicero and so modern in tone, in fact rarely finds expression in premodern times, either in the classical Mediterranean world or in other high cultures. Much more common is the view that humans, for all the architectural and engineering feats that they have accomplished at nature's expense, have done little beyond submitting to the order of the cosmos, taken to mean, at one end of the scale, the movement of the stars, and at the other, the genius of place—the spirits that govern a particular locality. And nowhere is this belief more persistently upheld than for the pleasure garden. The pleasure garden is an emblem of innocence. It is a paradise in which men and women live in contentment, without work and strife. In Christian art and literature, it embodies a state before the Fall. The garden, in contrast to the city, is somehow not an artifact. Despite all evidences of human forethought and labor, it is viewed as though it were a gift of nature or of God. Of course the garden—the pleasure garden—is an artifact. We may even argue that it is a purer manifestation of human will than are arable fields and villages because unlike the latter it does not answer to necessity. The pleasure garden, needless to say, is a plausible reality only to people who have satisfied their more pressing needs. The pleasure garden is a jeu is

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d'esprit—a playful use of surplus power. This surplus power can be channeled into other activities such as sports and games, embroidery and painting, and abstract thought. But as an act of will, gardening is preeminent for two reasons. One is that the garden is a little material world in which people can dwell, and not simply a fleeting exertion, a project on paper, or an object for the contemplative mind. The other reason is that the garden, unlike a painting or a sculpture, has to be maintained thoughtfully and systematically; otherwise it will revert to nature. A garden, to remain perfect, requires constant vigilance. This is true of all gardens (except perhaps for the few that are purely sculptural) but surpassingly true of large formal gardens where the precise lines reflect the human desire to completely dominate both space and time. It is easy to envisage the rapid decay of Louis XIV's Marly estate when the annual sum of money garnered for its support fell from 100,000 livres in 1698 to less than 5,000 in 1712. Gardens, with their air of innocent pleasure, aesthetic excellence, and religious import, have successfully hidden their roots in the exercises of power. What are these exercises? First are the acts of demolition. Before anything can be made, something must first be destroyed. We take for granted that in any artistic endeavor the finished product more than justifies the destruction that necessarily precedes it. With the making of a large garden, however, the things destroyed and removed may in their own terms have high human value—for example, farms and villages. Mencius (ca. 371-288 B.C.) was not pleased with the multiplication of gardens and parks in his time. He took them to be evidence of immorality among the rulers. "After the death of the Emperors Yao and Shun," he observed, the principles that mark sages fell into decay. Oppressive sovereigns, arising one after another, pulled down houses to make ponds and lakes so that the people knew not where they could rest in quiet, and threw fields out of cultivation to form gardens and parks so that the people could not get clothes and food. Afterward, corrupt speech and tyrannous deeds increased; gardens and parks, ponds and lakes, thickets and marshes, became more numerous; protected birds and beasts swarmed. By the time of Chou, the empire was in a state of great confusion.2 Landscaping, as a Utopian venture, requires a clean slate. Whatever

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exists must first be removed. Feats of preparatory destruction, sometimes on a large scale, occur whenever and wherever landscape gardening has become a mania with the powerful and the rich, as, for example, in France and England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In England, the transformation of the rural economy has caused anguish among the displaced and it has inspired literary laments, notably that of Oliver Goldsmith in The Deserted Village. Destruction visited not only the landscapes of the humble. Old gardens, no longer in style, also suffered; they were gutted to make room for new ones. Lancelot Brown, a prolific designer of British gardens from the 1750s until his death in 1783 and famous for his creation of placid prospects, had a streak of ruthlessness in him. He and, to a lesser degree, his successor Humphrey Repton acted like vandals when they tore up old formal gardens (for example, the great parterres of Blenheim) and countless tree-lined avenues.3 With great power often goes capaciousness, which may itself be a symptom of boredom. Destruction, rather than being the necessary step preparatory to a sustained effort of construction, may be repeated in a restless and aimless quest for novelty. Thus at Marly, bosquets, or green chambers, were repeatedly taken down and put up to amuse the aging Louis XIV and his courtiers. Great stretches of thick woodland were transformed with lightning speed into broad lakes, where people were rowed about in gondolas, and were then changed back to forests so dense that daylight was banished as soon as the trees were planted. Louis, duc de Saint-Simon, observed: "I speak of what I saw myself in six weeks, during which time fountains were altered a hundred times, and waterfalls redesigned in countless different ways. Goldfish ponds, decorated with gilding and delightful paintings, were scarcely finished before they were unmade and rebuilt over and over again/'4 Who built the great gardens? Whereas Michelangelo did indeed paint the Sistine Chapel, only an accepted convention of language allows us to say that André le Nôtre built Versailles. A great garden may be designed and supervised by a master artist but it is executed by a multitude of nameless artisans and laborers. Of Sui Yang-ti's imperial park near his capital, Lo-yang, it is reported that "the ground was broken over an area of two hundred ii in circuit (about seventy-five miles) and the labor of a million workers, on the average, was required." The figure of one million is no doubt an exaggeration, but it does suggest that for the construction of an imperial park armies of workers had to be recruited. Once com-

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pleted, such a park or garden may exude an air of formal calm or natural innocence, thus making it easy for people to forget its origin in forced labor, untold hardships, and death. Consider two telling incidents, one from Japan and the other from India. By the fifteenth century, some of the gardens in Japan were already quite large. Surprising, by modern standards and values, was the spirit in which these projects were undertaken—its deadly seriousness, its extravagance in terms of effort and cost. Landscape gardeners and their aristocratic patrons, who themselves were well versed in landscaping art, placed the highest value on rocks of a certain kind. To procure them, no cost in human labor was spared. For example, Lord Akamatsu detailed 1,800 of his retainers to bring stones from Uzumasa to the shogun Yoshinori's garden several miles away. At another time, Lord Hosokawa engaged 3,000 men to move rocks into another estate that the shogun was constructing. Accidents were bound to occur in the course of these large operations, and even minor mishaps to the precious objects—rock or plant—could have dire consequences for the people involved. Thus, when the large branch of a plum tree presented by Lord Kuroda to the shogun was broken en route, the shogun was so angry that he ordered the imprisonment of three of the gardeners and the arrest of five young Kuroda knights considered responsible for the accident. Three of the knights fled into exile, two committed suicide.5 In Mughul India, the emperor Jahangir ( 1605-27 ) was as sentimental as he was cruel, a combination of traits not unusual in autocrats with a taste for beauty. He loved to hunt, and near his hunting lodge he built a drinking pool for animals, in memory of a pet deer. The emperor's human subjects did not always fare so well. In the twelfth year of his reign he wrote: " At this time the gardener represented that a servant of Muqarrab Khan had cut down some champa trees above the bench alongside the river. On hearing this I became angry, and went myself to enquire into the matter and to exact satisfaction. When it was established that this improper act had been committed by him, I ordered both his thumbs to be cut off as a warning to others."6 Gardens are a blending of nature and artifice; they are the product of horticulture and architecture. On the one hand, they consist of growing things, on the other, of walls, terraces, statues, and fountains. Histories of gardens often distinguish between two broad types—natural and formal

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(or artificial)—and hint that whereas natural landscaping expresses human adaptation to nature, formal landscaping reveals the human need to dominate. In fact, will and power lie behind both types, and it is hard to say which is more significative of the human wish to order and impose. A "natural" garden, because it contains clumps of trees and serpentine waters, may seem a more modest venture than does a formal garden with its stone terraces and lacery of fountains, but the naturalness of the former is a calculated illusion. Because this illusion is intended, we may argue that the natural garden is even more of an artifice—a product of artful cunning—than is the formal garden, in which no attempt is made to hide human design. Whether a garden looks natural or not depends, in the final analysis, on the whim of the individual and of society. The taste of an individual is, of course, influenced by that of his society. However, an individual, if sufficiently self-assured and powerful, can run counter to society's taste. For example, although the prevailing style of gardening in Imperial Rome was formal and sculptural, that at Nero's Golden House was not. Suetonius described Nero's estate as having "an enormous pool, more like a sea than a pool, surrounded by buildings made to resemble cities, and a landscape garden consisting of plowed fields, vineyards, pastures and woodlands, in which every variety of domestic and wild animal roamed." Tacitus strongly disapproved of Nero's playground, not because it was adorned with "customary and commonplace luxuries like gold and jewels," but because of its "faked rusticity"—its "lakes, woods, and open spaces"—because of the "impudence with which Nero's architects and contractors sought to outbid nature."7 Toward the end of the seventeenth century and at the start of the eighteenth, landscape taste was turning away from the formality of earlier designs toward a style considered more romantic, natural, and what English critics called picturesque. Scholars have tried, without complete success, to account for this change of fashion. The lack of total success is not surprising if we frankly admit the component of whim in any exercise of power that is so free of necessity. Natural, picturesque, or formal? Whatever the decision, the power at the disposal of the landscapist must be equally large if the extent of the ground to be transformed is comparable. As a matter of fact, the more we know about the picturesque garden the more artifactitious and artificial it seems so that its real difference from the formal garden, in regard to the degree of "naturalness," is small

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and contracts to the amount of plant cover and to the dominance of curved as distinct from straight lines. Formal gardens boast many architectural and sculptural features: they are full of evidence of human handiwork. English gardens in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, although they moved deliberately away from Continental formalism, retained architectural profusion as an insignia of accomplishment. Chiswick, Claremont, Stowe, and Cirencester were all studded with temples, ruins, obelisks, classical seats, and Gothic bits and pieces. Fakery, no matter how blatant, was permisible if it produced the appropriate illusion. Batty Langley (1696-1751), in a book on rural landscaping, recommended the construction of ruins at the terminal points of avenues of trees, either ruins built of brick and plastered to imitate stone or painted on canvas and hung up. Where nature was the desired illusion, William Kent ( 1684-1748) went so far as to recommend the planting of dead trees "to give the greater air of truth to the scene."8 The most extraordinary example of a picturesque garden— extraordinary for its combination of naturalism and artificiality—was created, however, in France rather than in England, at Lunéville, in 1742. This curiosity, called Le Rocher, was an animated village constructed on the artificial rock bank of a canal. In its attempt to be both rustic and mechanically ingenious, both full of natural charm and self-conscious cleverness, it may be regarded as a prototype of the kinds of display offered at Fun Fairs and Disneyland. On Le Rocker's constricted site were no fewer than eighty-two carved wooden figures arranged in a series of rural vignettes, among them a shepherd playing a tune on his bagpipe while his dog looked after the flock; a boy pushing a swing on which a girl was seated; a child stroking a dog that was eating a biscuit; men working at a forge, playing the violin, drinking and singing; women making butter and washing linen; a cock crowing; a hermit meditating in a grotto, etc. This was not a static and silent spectacle. The figures moved and made appropriate sounds. Le Rocher was not so much a garden designed for pleasure only as the model of an idealized society and world, although we should remember that all gardens, no matter how attenuated and frivolous their use, preserve somewhere in their founding the seeds of this ideal.9 Far from the pretentiousness and sophistry to which picturesque gardens were prone lay those "rain-washed wooded slopes and gentle stretches of greensward" created by Lancelot Brown (1716-83), which

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did look natural and expressed eloquently the English love of nature. Yet to Brown himself nature was but a raw goddess who always strove "for perfection, but who never achieved it without the Aristotelian dressing of man's divinely rational faculties." Brown aimed at ideal form. Behind all that surface placidity of grass and water, rolling hills and woodlots, was the desire to impose a pictorial perfection on landscape. To this end, he introduced buildings with classical and literary allusions, and he planted trees, marshaling them when necessary into straight lines, right angles, or wedge shapes exactly as though he were designing scenic wings for the theater.10 In trying to understand the origins of the eighteentlvcentury English garden, scholars have noted the penetration of the Chinese influence toward the end of the seventeenth century. Chinese gardens were well known for their disregard of the rectilinear, for their attempt to reproduce the subtle lines and spaces of nature. It was believed that the Chinese adapted to nature and did not try to impose on it the formal and geometric patterns of man; they did not try to force nature into, as it were, stiff court attire as French gardeners had done. Much of this belief was well grounded, except for the crucial point concerning adaptation. Whatever the Chinese themselves might have said in their philosophical and poetic moods, their gardens did not in fact exemplify the adaptive posture. Rather they were masterful creations, feats of engineering as well as of art, and full of the pride of power. This was true especially of imperial parks and gardens. The emperor Hui-tsung ( 1082-1135), for example, ordered the construction of a mountain 225 feet in height on the plain outside his capital, K'ai-feng.11 The manipulative and architectural character of landscaping was not restricted to works of imperial scale. Significantly, the Chinese speak of building a garden, not planting one, as is still done in English. A Western visitor whose prior knowledge of Chinese landscaping is confined to artistic and literary representations may well be surprised by the clutter of the Chinese garden. He is taken aback by the huge piles of rocks and perhaps even more by the extraordinary number of buildings. Plant life seems sparse. Except for rocks and pools of stagnant-looking water, everywhere his eyes are confronted by pavilions, temples, balustrades, and walls. Literary descriptions of a garden often give the impression that architectural features are separated from each other by wide expanses of space. This is the effect that writers wish to produce. In reality, however,

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not only small city gardens but even the larger ones in the countryside tend to be rather "busy" with artifice (fig. 1). Expansive vistas are unusual. It is as though the Chinese prefer the illusion of space to actual, unimpeded views. That the garden is architecture rather than horticulture, and certainly not nature, is clearly manifest in the works of Western designers. One tradition treats the garden as an extension of the house. The garden displays human ingenuity and power expanding into and subduing nature, and not, as some modern interpreters would have it, nature making inroads into the human domain; nature does penetrate the house but only under strict house rules. In the ancient Roman world, not only did the rectilinear geometry of the house extend into nature's space, but the house's content of statuary, paintings, and benches also spilled into it. The ancients regarded the house and its grounds as a unit. Landscape architecture did not exist as a separate profession. In large estates, the same architects who designed the house also laid out its grounds. The idea that house and grounds formed one architectural complex, the units adjoining each other or linked by a covered walk, persisted into later historical periods. For example, in the Middle Ages people were more likely to speak of "building" a garden than of planting one. (In this regard, they were like the Chinese.) Built features tended to dominate (fig. 2). Medieval gardens were "walled, fenced, hedged and palisaded much more closely than they are nowadays," Teresa McLean observed. "There was a good deal of stonework, carpentry, hedge^making, locksmithing and painting to be done in the making of them, and more of the same in the making of their mounds, fountains, benches, railings, paths and raised beds. Well-to-do gardens had to be built before they could be cultivated." The prominent garden walls were a source of pride and joy and a major status symbol. Disputes about them were frequently recorded.12 In the Renaissance period, such esteemed architects as Alberti, Vignola, Giuliano da Sangallo, Giulio Romano, and Bramante contributed to the art of landscape design as a natural extension of architecture into the surrounding space. Where nature proved to be difficult—where, for example, the terrain was uneven—a designer overcame it by architectural means. Thus, to construct the Belvedere gardens at the Vatican, the architect Bramante triumphed over the irregular site by the ingenious creation of three terrace levels and connecting stairways. His work was much admired and is now regarded as a landmark in the history of

Fig. 1. The Pai Shih pavilion in the Pan Mou garden, Peking. Originally designed in the sixteenth century, it was restored by Inspector-General Lin Ch'ing in the 1840s. Note the extremely artificial character of the garden—the potted plants and the stones standing on pedestals both within the pavilion and outside it.

Fig. 2. Garden depicted in a miniature of the fifteenth century. Note its architectural character: the wall, fences, raised beds, wheeled stands for climbing plants, and two potted plants.

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landscaping. Architectural features such as pavilions, stairways, balustrades, and statues came to dominate Italian Renaissance gardens. Collectively they manifested an almost megalomaniac confidence in man's ability to control, transform, and improve. The skills needed to move earth, build retaining walls, terraces, pools, and avenues were also those needed in the military constructions of the period. Not surprisingly, Giuliano da Sangallo, Bramante, and other major architects of the Renaissance worked on both military fortifications and princely gardens.13 The prevalence of the architectural ideal entailed the subordination of plant life. In a formal garden, when the wind blew the branches on trees, shrubs or flowers did not sway, being too heavily trimmed for that. The variety of plants, apart from those exotics kept in museums of curiosities, was restricted. In a Renaissance garden, only those species that could be trained to meet an overall architectural design and its exactions were favored: for example, cypress, pine, ilex, laurel, box, juniper, and yew. Plants, regarded simply as architectural material, were forced into the solid geometric shapes of walls, mazes and labyrinths, rooms, temples, and theaters. We gain an insight into how far, in the sixteenth century, designers were willing to apply force in the service of aesthetic taste from Bernard Palissy's Receptes véritables (1563). He wished to create a green temple in which living trees simulated classical columns and described the procedures in the chilling language of a surgeon. I will mark and incise the foot of the elm where I wish to make the base of the column; similarly at the place where I wish to make a capital, I will make incisions, marks or bruises, and then Nature finding herself injured in these parts will send help and abundance of sap and juice to strengthen and heal the said wounds. And from this it will come about that at these wounded parts a superfluity of wood will be engendered which will produce the form of a capital and base of a column, and thus as the columns shall grow and increase, the shape of the capital and base will widen too. The unnaturalness of the procedure and of the desired outcome did occur to Palissy. In anticipation of criticism, he noted that his changes were not as extreme as those of a topiary gardener who might transform shrubs into the semblance of "a cock, a goose, and indeed several other kinds of animals." Moreover, Palissy believed that trees were a natural substance for construction, more natural indeed than stone; and the

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reason he gave was that stone columns, with their base and capital, merely imitated trees. He failed to see the irony of then making the trees imitate stone.14 Playfulness is a key feature of gardens. Not only do people play in the garden, but the garden itself is the product of a proud imagination able to construct a world full of magical and illusory effects. Landscape painting is one such effect: it magically captures a world and it creates an illusion of space. In China as well as in Europe, gardening and landscape painting are closely allied arts. A Chinese garden is a reduction of wild nature into a three-dimensional model attached to the domestic spaces of the house and circumscribed by a wall. A Chinese landscape painting is a more extreme reduction in two dimensions. A painted landscape scroll hanging on the wall of a study acts as a window that opens out to expansive space. Real windows exist in the garden partitions, through which one can see another segment of the landscape, and through a gate one can physically enter it. And yet a major function of such openings is to frame the garden beyond as though it were just a picture. Moreover, specialists on landscape design say that the whitewashed walls in a garden should be seen as the backdrop—a sort of paper scroll—in front of which rocks and plants are arranged as though they are elements of a painting. We see here paradox of a kind sometimes encountered in highly sophisticated cultures. Before the flat surface of a painting one is supposed to feel as if a three-dimensional world lies there into which one can enter. On the other hand, before the three-dimensional arrangements of a garden, one is supposed to imagine that a beautiful two-dimensional picture is being contemplated.15 An intimate bond between gardening and landscape painting also prevailed in the Western world. Both arts gave their practitioners a sense of control over nature and space. In the villas of Imperial Rome as well as in those of Renaissance Italy, landscapes of trees, birds, and orchards were sometimes painted on garden walls to create the illusion of a spacious countryside. By virtue of these murals, an owner sitting in his enclosed courtyard, rather than feeling hemmed in, was master of all that he surveyed, and what he surveyed included the painted scenes, which might well be of his landed possessions elsewhere.16 During the seventeenth century, the stress on visual experience (prospects and views) reached a point such that the entire landscape garden seemed designed as stage

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scenes or tableaux to be looked at rather than as encompassing worlds into which one could unselfconsciously plunge and be immersed. In the seventeenth century and especially in the eighteenth, landscape gardeners were strongly influenced by landscape art, and some of them were themselves landscape artists. For example, André le Nôtre in his youth thought of becoming a painter. As a young man, he commissioned a picture from Nicolas Poussin. Later he bought more of Poussin's works as well as those of Claude Lorrain, despite the fact that Claude's landscapes are almost romantic in spirit.17 Le Nôtre composed his gardens as a painter might compose a picture, except that his work was to be viewed from several angles, it being a composite of scenes; and these scenes were always framed by clipped hedges and, behind them, a wall of high trees. In England, already in 1650, Edward Norgate defined the landscape itself as "nothing but a picture of Fields, Cities, Rivers, Castles, Mountains, Trees or whatever delightfull view the Eye takes pleasure in."18 The literature on gardens in the next hundred years was almost as much preoccupied with the arrangements of tints and colors, light and shade, and perspectives as the literature on landscape painting. William Kent, famed for his gardens, was also an architect, sculptor, and painter. He agreed with Alexander Pope ( 1688-1744) that "all gardening is painting," and he found another champion of this view in the architect John Vanbrugh (1644-1726), who, on being consulted about laying out the grounds of Blenheim Palace, exclaimed, "Send for a landscape painter."19 Playfulness in the garden takes a variety of forms. At its simplest, it is fun and games. A Chinese garden, for example, is not only the place for study, solitude, and contemplation, but also where children play with their toys (as many paintings show) and adults play chess or hold poetry contests enlivened by wine and food; less innocently, young nobles play at games of war in the imperial parks. Among European gardens, those that belong to the Tudor period were outstandingly lively. Multiple use was normal. Pictures of gardens show men and women engaged in a wide range of activities: playing cards, paddling, rolling on the ground, teasing monkeys, fishing in the ponds, splashing each other with water, making love, wandering about in the maze, and chasing each other. The Italian Renaissanee garden was a place for meditation, philosophical discussions, and a center of botanic and medical research, but it was also a place for feasts, filled with joy, a place for the entertainment of friends, a place of intellectual as well as sexual freedom.20

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One special kind of play, known both to China and to Europe, is rustic simplicity. In a garden elaborate with art, the high-born pretend to be simple farmers, thus imitating children who in their games pretend to be engaged in serious work. In China, a beautiful pavilion on an artificial island in a man-made lake may nevertheless carry a plaque that exhorts incongruously, "Farm with diligence/' In the grounds of the Summer Palace near Peking there is still a row of farm buildings on Longevity Hill. The old empress dowager Tsu Hsi ( 1834-1908) used to enjoy watching her ladies struggling to feed the chickens on her farm. And, of course, in Europe we immediately think of Marie Antoinette leading the simple life on the dairy farm of Petit Trianon. The practice of establishing a rustic village in the midst of a grand estate also took root in other possessions of the Royal House of France, for instance, in the prince de Condé's park at Chantilly, at the duc d'Orléans* seat at Raincy, and on the property of Madame la Comtesse de Provence at Montreuil. At these farms and villages, the outward appearance of the little clusters of buildings spoke of simplicity and even poverty; inside them one would have found luxury and refinement. For example, at Chantilly, in Pierre de Nolhac's words, the barn with tottering walls, pierced with wretched skylights, became, once the threshold was crossed, a magnificent apartment with Corinthian architecture formed of columns in couples, painted red, fluted with silver and entwined with garlands of flowers; Cupids played in the clouds of the roofing, and the upholstery matched the curtains of rose taffetas, bordered with silver. Other hovels concealed a dining-hall, a library, a billiard room decorated with trophies of gardening tools. The imitation tavern with its well in the yard was really a kitchen provided with all the utensils necessary for serving a princely supper. The visitor, supposing that he was on a peasant's property, would have found, side by side with enchanted dwellings that seemed to have sprung out of a fairy tale, a real dairy, a stable full of cows, a mill that was really grinding corn, and a bakehouse where bread was baking.21 In the real world, events both natural and human are often beyond the control of individuals, no matter how powerful. In the world of pretense or theater, by contrast, conflicts may indeed arise but they can be resolved by the magic wand of art. Significantly, the history of the garden is entwined with that of the theater. In China, the garden has traditionally

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provided a setting for musical and theatrical performances. In late medie~ val Europe, revels, masques, and pageants were held in the garden. Italian Renaissance gardens—those of the Villa Mondregore and Borghese, for example—boasted permanent arenas and theaters for entertainment. By the end of the seventeenth century, France's gardens too might harbor permanent theaters. Thebosquets of Versailles were green halls elaborately decorated with fountains, statues, and potted plants; they could seat as many as 3,000 spectators. Not only did the garden contain the theater, but the design of the theater also influenced the design of the garden. In 1780, the architect Le Camus de Mesières urged landscape gardeners to use theatrical effects in their compositions. "Let us turn your eyes to our Theatres," he wrote in Génie de Varchitecture, "where the simple imitation of nature determines our affections. Here in the enchanted Palace of Armida, all is magnificent and voluptuous. "22 In England, the close association between garden and theater is suggested by the fact that figures important in the literature and design of gardens such as Pope, Joseph Addison (1672-1719), and the third earl of Burlington ( 1694-1753) all had strong links with the stage. Vanbrugh, too, had been a playwright and was involved with the theater before he turned to architecture and landscape architecture. Of course the garden is, in its own right, an artwork of power and imagination. The garden is power in a confident mood—witness the size and masterful layouts of some of its grander specimens; and it is power in a whimsical mood—witness the details of design. Each achievement in the technical sphere encourages the designer's imagination to fly higher. When the engineers were able to bring more water into the tanks of Mughul gardens, the single jet of former times multiplied into scores and even hundreds of fountains, as at the Shalamar gardens of Shah Jahan (1628-58) at Lahore. But even without the stimulus of major technical innovations, the mind is free to elaborate on details with abandon. Thus, the pool that is at the heart of the Persian concept of the garden evolved from a simple rectangular or circular tank into intricate lobate designs by the fifteenth century.23 In theory, the Chinese garden respects nature and the natural. But the more we attend to its details, the more artificial—indeed affected—it appears. Far from being an escape into the grand simplicities of nature, it is in some ways an old civilization's most contrived toy. Dissemblance is

Fig. 3. The great stones of Shih Tzu Lin (Lion Grove) in Su-chou. They are supposed to resemble sitting lions. The garden dates back to the fourteenth century. Photograph taken in 1918.

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everywhere. Nothing is quite what it seems. Rocks represent wild and towering peaks, but also animals and monsters (fig. 3). In a novel written in the eighteenth century, a party of men viewing a newly built garden is confronted by "rugged rocks looking either like goblins or resembling savage beasts, lying crossways or in horizontal or in upright positions, on the surface of which grew moss and lichen with mottled hues or parasitic plants which screened off the light, while narrow paths wound around the rocks like the intestines of a sheep. "24 A rarer example of Chinese conceit is the rock stream. Rocks are arranged to suggest a stream bed that at any moment may be filled with tumbling water. This device, known to gardeners in the eighth century and perhaps even earlier, is meant to deceive the eye, for no water is likely to run through it.25 The architectural elements of a Chinese garden are richly capricious. Doors in the partitions may be simple rectangles, but almost as common are octagons and circles, and where circular they are known as moon gates. Doors, especially in the gardens of the late Ch'ing and early Republican periods, may also be shaped like a vase, gourd, flower petal, or leaf. Even more fanciful are the windows, which not only take the forms of flowers and fruits but also of such commonplace artifacts as fan, vase, carafe, urn, or teapot.26 A figurative way of looking at things is strongly encouraged in the Chinese garden by its close link with poetry: the garden inspires poetry and is also the place where poems are frequently composed. Landscape features in the garden, rather than being allowed to speak for themselves, are often supplemented by evocative words, uttered in passing by literary viewers or permanently inscribed. Thus, rocks are "goblins and wild animals, " as we have already noted, or they are one's "older brother"; pathways become "geese" and "meander like playing cats," pavilions over the water are "boats," and five pavilions set together become the "claws of the Imperial five-toed dragon."27 As a toy or plaything, the garden should be ingenious and full of surprises—and it is. Again and again in the gardening literature the designer is urged to avoid the obvious and seek the unusual and unexpected. Hiddenness and secrecy are desirable. A wall is to be "hidden by creepers," and buildings should be "partly concealed by trees." Sometimes the surprises can be extraordinarily elaborate, as the following case suggests. Ni Ts'an, a Yuan dynasty painter, was once invited by his friend to

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35

see lotus flowers. Upon his arrival he saw nothing but an empty courtyard. His astonishment, however, was as great as his earlier disappointment when, returning to the same courtyard after the feast, he saw a pond full of lotus. The magic was a simple one. Hundreds of pots of lotus flowers were swiftly placed in the courtyard, which, being slightly sunk, became a pool when a water reservoir discharged just enough water to submerge the pots.28 Another illustration of how far the ambitious garden-architect is willing to go to create a magical world is given in the eighteenth-century novel mentioned earlier. Members of a party touring the garden enter a building and find, to their surprise, that its interior consists only of corridors, alcoves, and galleries, so that properly speaking it can hardly be said to have rooms. The partition walls have wood paneling, ail exquisitely and fancifully carved, and they are pierced by numerous apertures of exuberantly varied shapes. Shelving is concealed in the double thickness of the partition at the base of these apertures, making it possible to use them for storing books and displaying antique bronzes. False windows and doors in these ingenious partitions further heighten their magical effect. The garden building itself, already bewildering in its complex shifting spaces, is provided with additional devices that redouble its intricacy. The touring group's host, as he walks down a passageway, finds that another party similar to his own advances to meet him, only to realize that he is walking toward a large mirror. Circumventing the mirror, the group is confronted by "an even more bewildering choice of doorways on the other side."29 Surprises play an equally prominent role in the European pleasure garden. Builders and their patrons take pride in grandeur, but grandeur can be boring. Complementing the expansive open space and formal clarity is the principle of intricacy, bewilderment, and surprise: hence the mazes and labyrinths, the bosquets and the giardini segreti, the trick fountains and the excesses of topiary art. We may well wonder at the childishness of our forebears. Consider as one example among many the first garden apartment (bosquet) at Versailles—the Salle de Festin. An island ringed by canal water stood in the middle of a glade. Bridges to the island could be raised suddenly by a hidden mechanism, thus stranding the visitors. Practical jokes of this kind no doubt provoked much merriment among courtiers who in other respects were a sophisticated people.30 At Trianon, to give another illustration, the entire color scheme of the

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gardens was once changed during the short span of the Sun King's lunch.31 (One's mind drifts inexorably to the harassed gardeners in Alice in Wonderland, who were obliged to paint the white roses red in short order.) Was the king's desire for the unexpected and the magical mere childishness, or did it reveal the mental state of a powerful monarch whose jaded appetite must be constantly stimulated by novelty? Perhaps the difference in personality between a spoiled child and a blasé aesthete is smaller than we think. The child, after all, is also easily bored and has delusions of power; his desires are fickle, he plays with things at hand— bending and twisting them, often destroying them in the end. Compared with the power of a child, that at the disposal of a nobleman and landowner is of course far from delusory. A potentate can command a large garden to be built for his pleasure. Such a work, however innocent and beautiful in appearance, may nonetheless also be an exercise in willfulness and force directed against nature. We shall explore how water has been compelled to perform and plants have been made to grow in whimsical disregard of their natural inclinations—how these elements of nature have become, for powerful people, sources of delight and flattering reminders of their ability to command and impose.

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FOUNTAINS AND PLANTS

Water, although inorganic, is nevertheless widely regarded as in some sense "alive," even in modern times. Water, after all, moves. It runs over its bed and jumps over pebbles. The spring, we say, is the source of life—an ancient figure of speech that retains its appeal. Water can be trained to move fast or slow, in sharp bends or arrow straight, and even uphill. Water is harnessed by technology to irrigate fields and generate power. It can also be made into a plaything, forced to leap and dance for human pleasure. Mencius asked, "Is it right to force water to leap up?" He was taking the position that human nature is inclined to act in certain ways and not others, using the movement of water as an analogy. "Water," he said, " will flow indifferently to east or west, but it will not flow indifferently up and down." Now, of course, he added, "by striking water you can make it leap up over your forehead and by damming and leading it you may force it up a hill, but do such movements accord with the nature of water?" Obviously not. "It is the force applied that causes water to behave thus."1 Water is essential to an agricultural civilization that has established itself just beyond the margin of the steppes. The Chinese, since protohistoric times, have sought to control water. Their simplest and most ancient device takes advantage of gravity: water is drawn from a stream and led down ditches cut in a naturally inclined surface. However, since at least the Han dynasty the Chinese have also used the chain pump to force water upward so as to distribute it more effectively. Water has been made to perform against its nature, but this was done to satisfy primary economic needs. The question we now raise is, To what extent have the Chinese 37

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treated water as a plaything, taken delight in making it act against its nature out of a sense of power and of fun? In creating the garden, the Chinese have not hesitated to change the course of streams, damming up their their natural flow and digging into the ground to provide more spacious beds. The pond or lake is an essential feature of the Chinese garden. Every technique of engineering and of art is used to make the body of water seem natural. Consider the West Lake of Hang-chou, perhaps the most famous of all the public parks in China. Its beauty has been celebrated by poets and artists for more than a thousand years. Even today, every tourist feels obliged to pay it the homage of a visit. The body of water is large enough to sustain the illusion of nature—indeed, of untamed nature. But the lake is in fact artificial. Created by a dike thrown across the sluggish streams of a delta, perhaps as early as the first century A.D., the lake survived only through dredging and periodic enlargement. Being shallow, it was always threatened by accumulating mud and aquatic plants. When Hang-chou was the capital of the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1279) and use of the lake was intense, troops patrolled the lakeshores to prevent people from throwing rubbish or planting water chestnuts in it.2 Water, then, was manipulated—sometimes on a large scale—for pleasure. But did the Chinese, as Mencius put it, ever "strike water and so cause it to leap up"? In other words, were fountains and (in particular) upward-shooting jets a part of the Chinese repertoire of games played on nature? Until recently, it had been generally assumed that fountains were unknown in China before the Jesuit missionaries introduced them from 1750 onward—dramatically at Yuan Ming Yuan, the " Versailles of Peking." Joseph Needham argues, however, that evidence for the use of fountains may be found in almost every century after the Han. The earliest and clearest description of fountains and jets occurs in an account of a building called the Cool Hall (Liang Tien), built by the emperor Hsüan Tsung about A.D. 747. This hall, used for imperial audiences in times of intense heat, was cooled by water-powered fans, by ice applied to stone chairs, and (as the Chinese text put it) by "water forced to rise in the four corners of the hall, forming screens, which came down with a splash." Some three and a half centuries later, a man describing the glories of the Northern Sung capital, K'ai-feng, in the year 1148 mentioned a certain temple at which there were "two statues of the Buddhas Manjusri and Samantabhadra riding on white lions. From the five fingers of each of

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39

their outstretched hands, which quivered all the time, streams of water poured out in all directions." At a still later date, it was recorded of the last emperor of the Yuan dynasty (1260-1368), who liked mechanical toys, that among his possessions were dragon-fountains with balls kept dancing on the jets and dragons spouting perfumed mist.3 Despite such evidences, it is clear that the Chinese did not *'cause water to leap up" at anything like the scale of the displays in Europe. How important were jets of water in other high cultures outside of the European tradition? Water, we know, lay at the heart of the Persian and Islamic gardens. Typically the Persian garden was divided into four parts by canals in the shape of a cross. At the center were a pavilion and a pool of welling water. This plan became firmly established by the Sassanian period (224-642). Its oldest element was the pool, which symbolized life that flowed effortlessly and joyfully. High regard, even worship, was directed at the welling water. Alien to the native Persian tradition were playful, high-shooting fountains, and yet once introduced they quickly caught the fancy of powerful rulers. Thus the great Safavid garden (seventeenth century) of the Hazar Jarib at Isfahan had as many as five hundred jets of water. The technology used to create such wonders, however, could be rather primitive. At the Ali Qapu Palace of Isfahan, a fountain played in a pool on the fourth floor. Power was furnished by oxen. A long chain of buckets plunged into a cistern buried beneath the ground and then raised the water to a tank on the sixth floor of the palace; from there water flowed into the pool below. As for attempts to make jets of water frolic in accordance with some predetermined pattern, these might call for balletic rather than mechanical ingenuity. Sometimes a fountain system worked only when nimble-fingered and swift-footed servants were in attendance. Donald Wilber reports: " We hear of such a system from an account of a visitor to the Bagh-i-Takhut, or Garden of the Throne, at Shiraz. His host was anxious to display patterns of spouting water and accomplished this effect by means of servants who dashed from nozzle to nozzle, holding wads of cloth over those openings not required at a given moment."4 In northern India, the Islamic gardens of the Mughul emperors boasted fountains in abundance as technology freed the imagination of the designers. A single jet here and there developed, by the middle of the seventeenth century, into hundreds of fountains all in one garden or into artificial rain such as that around the Lotus Pool at Udaipur. The Mughul emperors were fortunate in having in their service such outstanding

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engineers as Haidar Malik and ' Ali Mardan Khan, who were able to bring water from distant sources—by means of canals—into the gardenparadises of their patrons. Nevertheless, the jets of water in gardens of Islamic and Persian inspiration tended not to have the volume, force and thunder of European works at their height of development. The Oriental emphasis was on the simple spray or the single stream, multiplied, and on the delicacy of the water tracery that complemented the intricate carvings and ornaments of the architectural facades.5 In Europe, the history of the pleasure garden has its chief inspiration and roots in ancient Rome and, particularly, in the Rome of the Imperial Period. All Roman gardens have water as a major theme. Such, at least, is now our impression because all writers of the time who touched on the subject of the garden mentioned water with enthusiasm; and all archaeological excavations of villas reveal the presence of a complete system of pipes and ditches, even at places a private aqueduct to bring water in from afar should local sources or the supply from a large public aqueduct nearby prove inadequate. As for the small city garden, diggings such as those at Pompeii show, inevitably, the foundations of a pond and of fountains fed by lead pipes.6 The importance of water is also made evident to us through the eloquent letters of Pliny the Younger. He possessed two beautiful villas, one near the sea at Laurentum and the other in the hills of Tuscany. Fond as Pliny was of his Laurentine estate he did reproach it for its lack of a running stream and of natural fountains. By contrast, the Tuscan villa was well fed by water from the hills, and Pliny responded to this gift of nature by having water everywhere, both inside and outside the house. Several rapturous descriptions appear in his letters to his friend, but one point of special interest to us is the comment on a fountain from which the water " shoots up into the air and is caught in the basin as it falls back."7 Pliny's villas were handsomely appointed, but far grander in conception and scale than anything Pliny could have envisaged was the emperor Hadrian's villa at Tivoli, some twenty miles from Rome, built between A.D. 125 and 136. Its dominant theme was water and marble. Reflecting on Tivoli's special aura, one modern observer, Eleanor Clark, has this to say: "Water was a prime element in architecture, here [in Tivoli] as in Rome, an element to be given shape, form, like other materials, subject to conceptions as varied—left flat and still or used in other simple ways on occasion, but probably more often elaborate in its faces and kinds of

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motion." Water provides an illusion of distance and is "the undefinable co-medium of light, serving purposes of luxury that later, when indoors was really indoors and glass was better, were taken over by wall-length mirrors and crystal chandeliers/'8 In Roman estates, as at the Tivoli villa, water poured out of fountains, into baths, as cascades in nymphaeums, or stood still in elongated ponds. Water was everywhere. But one question remains. Did the Romans make the water jump? The answer is yes. We have, after all, a clear description of water shooting up in Pliny's Tuscan estate, although he did add that this display was intermittent, not continuous. The Tuscan topography, moreover, made it easy for natural hydraulic pressure to do its work. Hadrian's villa was less well sited for this purpose. Tivoli certainly had fountains, but how high did the water rise into the air? An answer to questions of this kind is made difficult by the fact that Roman writers used the word salientes, which could mean either ordinary fountains or jets of water. We are perhaps safe in assuming that, whatever the ambition of the time, elaborate sprays and high-volume jets of water were unlikely to be a prominent feature of the Roman garden. One reason is that the Romans lacked the technical knowledge to sustain the hydraulic pressure where this did not exist naturally by virtue of the topography. Despite the great advances made by the Romans in the art of distributing water and despite the architectural splendor of the aqueducts, their understanding of the principles of hydraulics was even less than that of certain Greeks whose works they knew and quoted. Available evidence suggests that the Romans guessed rather than rationally calculated the effects of head, slope, resistance, and other factors on the rate of flow.9 Near Hadrian's villa, at Tivoli, is the Villa d'Esté, built for Cardinal Ippolito II d'Esté from the year 1550 onward. The architect, Pirro Ligorio, sought inspiration from Hadrian's derelict villa. The hydraulic engineer was Orazio Olivieri, who successfully diverted and channeled a branch of the local river Anio so that an unlimited supply of water could descend the slope of the gardens. Although the Villa d'Esté has been described as the most Roman of all gardens, it does differ from its classical predecessors in the sheer exuberance of its waterworks (fig. 4). For centuries the fountains of Villa d'Esté have been one of the sights of Italy. Montaigne was there about 1581 and what struck him most was the volume of water. Besides volume, there was ingenuity. The fontanieri (fountain engineers) played with water in extraordinary ways. For exam-

Fig. 4. The massive fountains—the fontana deli' órgano idraulico—devised by Orazio Olivieri for the Villa d'Esté at Tivoli. (Drawing by Wayne Howell)

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pie, at the Fountain of the Dragon the volume of the central jet could be varied so that, as Antonio del Re put it in 1611, "it made explosions like a small mortar, or many arquebuses discharged together; and at times it grew larger like a pavilion representing a downpour of rain." The fontanieri, says David Coffin, "treated water as a sculptor might clay, molding it into a variety of forms. Tall, thin jets vied with transparent veils or heavy cascades of water. In the center of the Oval Fountain jets of water formed the lily of the Este coat of arms, matching the lilies and eagles created of terra-cotta by the sculptors."10 The best way to appreciate this hillslope wonder is to start at the bottom. Moving up, the visitor encounters first fish ponds overarched by gentle sprays of water; then, as the climb begins he sees glittering water staircases, then great fountains enclosed in garden rooms; then, after a steep climb, he sees finally one last silver jet spraying high into the sky as the great open terrace before the house is reached. This itinerary gives the impression that the higher one moves up the garden slope the higher the waters are made to jump: the contrast between the placid fish ponds at the bottom level and the high jet on the upper terrace, after a steep ascent on foot, can be singularly dramatic.11 This drama and this beauty were made possible by a most elaborate system of underground canals, culverts, water mains and pipes—the hidden machinery of a stage. Because an extensive infrastructure had been put in place and could be altered only with difficulty, the gardens of the Villa d'Esté, four centuries after their construction, still resemble the earliest plans and engravings, and this despite the itch of a succession of owners to alter them in response to whim and changing fashion.12 Advances in hydraulic engineering made feasible the water fantasies of Renaissance and Baroque gardens—advances indicated by treatises that catered to the special needs of the ambitious gardener, such as Bernard Palissy's Discours admirables (1580), Olivier de Serres's Theatre d'agriculture (1600), Salomon de Caus's Les Raisons des forces mouventes (1616), Israel de Silvestre's Jardins et fontaines (1661), and Jean Francois's L'Art des fontaines ( 1665 ). The mood of the times was that nature existed to be defied. * Torcer la nature" was a key phrase in the gardening literature. According to Montaigne, the grand duke Francesco de' Medici "chose an inconvenient, sterile and mountainous site—without springs" at which to build his villa (the villa at Pratolino) "so as to have the honor of sending for water five miles from there, and his sand and lime another five miles." In 1668, when the astute financier Jean Baptiste Colbert advised his royal

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master Louis XIV not to build his palace and gardens at the unpromising site of Versailles, the king haughtily replied: "C'est dans les choses difficiles que nous faisons paraître notre vertu" (It is in overcoming difficult matters that we make apparent our power).13 Water was a ceaseless obsession at Versailles—a locality that SaintSimon once described as "that most dismal and thankless of spots, without vistas, woods, or water.014 Without water? Eventually, Versailles became a fabulous City of Waters, although this was achieved at an enormous cost in money, labor, and human lives. In a first attempt to bring water to the gardens, the land nearby was tapped by underground drainage and all the moisture in the area was drawn into the reservoir through a system of pipes. This step proved inadequate. The next step was to build a tower and have water lifted up to it by means of a horseoperated piston pump. A Great Fete marked these accomplishments in the summer of 1668. Soon after, full-scale water displays were regular features of garden parties, consuming more water in a day than the public pumps delivered to the entire population of Paris of 600,000 people.15 As the garden continued to expand, so did demands for more and more water. The king turned to the rivers of France, unperturbed by the idea that fertile valleys might be dried up to feed his hydraulic toys (fig. 5). The first river to be tapped was the Seine, followed by the Bièvre and the Loire. Finally, with the approval of the great military engineer and architect Sébastien Vauban, it was decided to bring water from the river Eure, a tributary of the Seine to the west of Versailles. Work began in 1685. For three years, under the supervision of the minister of war, François Michel Louvois, thirty thousand soldiers labored day and night to bring water to the palace grounds through forty miles of canals and aqueducts. After eight million livres had been spent and thousands of soldiers had died of injury and malaria, the project was abandoned. Water remained scarce at Versailles, so much so that courtiers received only one small basinful each for their daily ablutions.16 It reflects the spirit of the times that necessity had to yield to the exigency of play and display: there might not be enough water for the maintenance of bodily hygiene, but somehow enough water had to be found for the fountains, which finally reached the astonishing number of fourteen hundred at Versailles and Marly (Louis XIV's hermitage, some five miles from Versailles).17 Fountains were not only a key aesthetic element in the great gardens of the Renaissance and Baroque periods; they were also a toy, a sort of joke,

Fig, 5. The great Machine de Marly, completed in 1682, used an extraordinarily complex set of wheels to pump water from the Seine to an aqueduct (not shown here) that then supplied the fountains and lakes of Versailles. An anonymous engraving.

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an expression of power in a frolicsome mood. The robust humor of fountains, which must seem childish to modern taste, was manifest not only in the jets of water shooting from the penises and nipples of human statues, but also in the widespread popularity of "water surprises." In England, one of the few improvements that Queen Elizabeth made at Hampton Court was "a splendid high and massy fountain'* that spouted water at unexpected moments, drenching the spectators around it. In the gardens of the Alcázar at Seville fountains were designed to give a cold douche to unsuspecting visitors. At the château and parks of Hellbrunn, a few miles south of Salzburg (built by Archbishop Marcus Sitticus of Ems in 1614), practical jokes included shooting jets of water on the guests from artificial antlers hung on a wall and squirting them up from the seats of their chairs. In Italy, the Villa d'Esté boasted several water tricks at the Fountain of Rome. Thus, the seats that were arranged along two sides of the piazza for people to sit while admiring the fountain contained secret holes through which water spurted to wet the buttocks of the weary beholders. Stairs that led to a little green patch below the cascade released a surprise jet of water which bathed whoever stepped on it "from the navel down." An iron gate in the middle of the bridge that led to the podium was contrived to eject two different streams of water at unsuspecting strollers (fig. 6).18 Montaigne, while visiting Italy, was greatly impressed by the mechanical and hydraulic ingenuities of the Tuscan villa at Pratolino. At one place in the garden, he found an elaborate water trick: "On touching a spring, the whole grotto becomes full of water, and all the seats spout minute streams against you; and when, fleeing from the attack, you seek refuge on the stairs that lead to the castle, the motion of another hidden mechanism gives play to a thousand jets of water that inundate you with their showers till you reach the top."19 Apart from these surprises, which made the guests at least momentarily wet and uncomfortable, garden-builders were also immoderately fond of more innocent mechanical toys operated by water power. At the Pratolino villa, for example, hidden machinery made human figures move and, even more remarkable, made artificial animals jump into the water, drink, and swim about. At Hellbrunn, puppets swam around in a basin, spouting water the while; and birds piped among the stalactites. Perhaps the best known of these water-driven ingenuities is that at the Villa d'Esté, praised by both Montaigne and (later) John Evelyn. On entering a part of the garden, Montaigne wrote, "you hear the notes of birds blended in har-

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mony," artificial sounds produced by the impact of water falling on trapped air. *'Touch a spring and you give motion to an artificial owl, which, on presenting itself on top of a rock, causes a sudden cessation of the previous harmony, the little birds being supposed to have become alarmed at his presence; then, on touching another spring, the owl retires, and the birds recommence, and you can continue this sport as long as you like."20 Forcing water to jump, spray, or weave into fanciful patterns waned in popularity with the growing acceptance of the picturesque and natural gardens from the end of the seventeenth century onward. As we have noted earlier, nature was still seen as a "raw goddess," and an artistgardener was under obligation to perfect her form by eliminating her "false accidents." Lancelot Brown preferred placid or cascading waters to shooting fountains, but what he created was no less a total artifact, as William Cowper pointed out in the following lines: He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn; Woods vanish, hills subside, and vailles rise: And streams, as if created for his use, Pursue the track of his directing wand, Now murm'ring soft, now roaring in cascades— Ev'n as he bids!21 Power makes it possible for the builder to act on a whim and do with nature whatever he pleases. Eventually, fatigue and boredom set in, or perhaps guilt; the builder then imposes a limit on what he does, persuading himself that not he but some external law derived from nature dictates such restraint. The excesses of artificiality are denounced, a " return to nature" is praised. Power is still exercised but with a proud and ostentatious restraint that confuses even further the meaning of natural in a work of art. We have seen how water was toyed with, particularly in the period from 1500 to 1700, when power was used with a childish lack of inhibition. Let us now turn to plants. Playing and experimenting with plants take a variety of forms, some innocent and imaginative, others that must be described as extremely willful or perverse. One common form of play, practiced throughout the long history of gardening, is to uproot plants from their native habitats and transport them to a new and alien setting. To play and experiment at a regal scale, one must have the right kinds of material, and the more exotic

,,

Fig. 6. The water trick over the bridge at the Fountain of Rome, Villa d'Esté. From Venturini's seventeenth^century engraving.

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these are the more they are valued. Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt, who reigned from ca. 1486 to 1468 B.C., desired frankincense, a rare perfume that comes from the gum of the Boswellia tree. At that time the Boswellia could be found only in the land of Punt (Somalia) in East Africa. A mission was dispatched to bring specimens of the tree back to Egypt. This was done. The trees apparently flourished in their new home, under human supervision, each plant in its own pot of earth. Since the time of Queen Hatshepsut, potentates everywhere— whosoever fancied gardens—spared no expense and effort to bring strange forms of life into their domain, thus enhancing its mystery and splendor. A time came when the entire world could be tapped for exotic specimens. By the early part of the seventeenth century, great Roman families were able to assemble flora from such distant places as India, the Cape of Good Hope, South and Central America, the Caribbean Islands, and North America. The multiformity of plants is suggested by Cardinal Barberini's collection. Among its more important specimens were Egyptian papyrus, the Hibiscus mutabilis, Judas trees, tamarind, sumac, yucca, begonias, passion flowers, exotic jasmines, large "Canadian" strawberries, tuberose, amaryllis belladonna, sprekelia or Jacobean lilies, and the scarlet lobelia, or cardinal flower.22 Exotics from distant countries, in addition to providing prestige and an air of opulence, satisfied Renaissance man's yearning for the bizarre. This yearning could also be somewhat assuaged by unusual flora closer to home. In Tudor England, it would seem that certain flowers found favor merely because they were curious, such as the little trefoils called Snailes or Barbary Buttons that John Parkinson, in a book published in 1629, described as "pretty toyes for Gentlewomen." Flowers could be playthings, and some of them bore comical names such as Hose-in-Hose, the Foolish Cowslip, and Jack-an-Apes-on Horse-backe; the last name was used by country people for anything out of the ordinary. Tudor gardens contained many useful plants, including fruit trees. Fruits matured into predictable shapes. The more playful horticulturists wondered, however, whether this had to be. Could not the shapes be altered into something more amusing? They could, provided the fruits were constrained by molds while still young. There seemed hardly any limit to what one could do. As Francis Bacon put it, "You may have cucumbers as long as a cane; or as round as a sphere; or formed like a cross. You may have also apples in the form of pears or lemons. You may

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have also fruit in more accurate figures, as we said of men, beasts, or birds, according as you make the moulds."23 The desire for power over nature, exhibited in the manufacture of curiosities, has led people to feign achievements and indulge in idle boasting, according to John Parkinson. Some writers wrote as though they had the means "of making flowers double as they list, and of giving them colour and sent [sic] as they please, and to flower likewise at what time they will." Some of these errors, Parkinson went on to say, "are ancient, and continued long by tradition, and others are of later invention: and therefore the more to be condemned, that men of wit and judgement in these dayes should expose themselves in their writings, to be rather laughed at, then believed for such idle calls."24 In Parkinson's time, people wanted to play with flowers and fruits as they wished but lacked the techniques to do so. This wish remains. Now, in the twentieth century, genetic science has made it possible for flower fanciers to be extravagantly imaginative and still hope for successful realization. A hybridist can now, writes Eleanor Perényi, take a simple flower and double or triple the petals, ruffle them, curl them. He can make an aster look like a chrysanthemum, a tulip like a peony, a marigold like a carnation, ad infinitum He can turn the colossus into a pigmy and vice versa. Above all, he can mess up the normal color range of a plant so that it no longer sends a familiar message to the eye. Burpee Seed Company for years ran a contest offering $ 10,000 to anyone who raised a white marigold. They never explained why a flower with gold in its name would be more désirable in white. They didn't have to, not to an audience trained to prefer any departure from the natural; chartreuse narcissus, mauve daylilies, pink forget-me-nots and those bi-colors inflicted wherever possible.25 Long before humans had the power to alter the color and scent of a plant or change it from a "colossus into a pigmy," they were able to alter the shape of a plant through the art of clipping. The viewing of plants as sculptural material to be freely transformed has deep roots in Western civilization; moreover, this attitude persists or is recurrent. In ancient Egypt, gardeners yielded to the temptation of clipping their trees into spherical and columnar forms. The ancient Romans were uninhibited in their playfulness. Hedge clipping had become an art, known eventually as

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topiary art. Pliny the Younger heavily indulged. Describing his Tuscan villa, he noted how at one place box trees were cut into numerous different shapes, "even letters that spell out the name of the owner and again of the artist." Such was the proprietorial and artistic vanity of those times. Animal forms were executed in Pliny's villa and no doubt in the estates of other Romans as well.26 Medieval gardeners played with plant materials by creating arbors and clipped hedges. A fancy piece of plant architecture was the labyrinth, known sometimes as the House of Daedalus. In England such a labyrinth may have existed as early as the -twelfth century. Henry II is said to have hidden the Fair Rosamond, his beloved, in a vegetal contrivance at Woodstock.27 Whatever the status of mazes and labyrinths prior to 1400, they were popular by Tudor times. They appealed to the Tudor sense of fun and humor and to their use of the garden for recreation and games. A host enjoyed losing his guests in an intricate maze and then rescuing them when they cried out for help. From the evidence of pictorial art, we know that gardeners clipped certain individual trees and bushes into fancy shapes. The crowns of trees set in the middle of flower beds were sometimes cut to resemble triple wreaths. On May Day, artificial fruits might be hung Fig. 7. Artificial May tree used at the Festival of Spring. Artificial fruits were hung on the crowns as an attraction to the dancers, A.D. 1460.

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on the wreaths (fig. 7). Some bushes might be cut into the shape of pheasants. Both the clipped tree with artificial fruits and the pheasantshaped bush appear to have been inspired by ideas that the Crusaders brought home. Vegetal pheasants were a substitute for the real pheasants that strutted in an Oriental paradise; and the decorated, clipped trees could have been influenced by tales of bejeweled artificial trees in the palaces and gardens of the East. Topiary art was known and practiced on a modest scale before 1400. In the course of the fifteenth century it began to acquire prominence in certain Italian gardens (fig. 8). One such garden belonged to Giovanni Rucellai, a rich Florentine merchant for whom Leone Battista Albert! served as architect and friend. Rucellai kept a diary during a time of forced leisure caused by the plague of 1459. In his diary the description of his garden is silent on the subject of sculpture, except for the terra-cotta vases. He lays stress, instead, on the clipped box. At one place in the garden the box is cut into the shapes of giants and centaurs, ships, galleys, temples, arrows, men, women, popes, cardinals, dragons, and all kinds of animals.28 Two literary works further bear witness to the popularity of plant architecture and sculpture during the second half of the fifteenth century. One work is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Dream of Poliphilus), believed to have been written by Francesco Colonna, a monk of the Dominican Order in Venice, and first published there in 1499. Topiary effects tended to dominate Colonna's garden. Trees and bushes were made to look like pavilions and fountains and to simulate sculptures of animals. The second poetical work is De Hortis Herperidum, by Jovianus Pontanus, written about the year 1500. Jovianus may well have been thinking of Rucellai's villa when he made the following recommendations: When the tree, owing to the gardener's constant care and attention, begins to put out its branches and unfold its leaves, then choose the task for each, and make the formless mass into shapes of beauty. Let one climb to high tower or bulwark, another bend to spear or bow; let one make strong the trenches or the walls; one like trumpet must wake men to arms and summon hosts to battle. Thus, shall you by skill, time, native strength and careful nurture, convert the tree into many new forms, even as a thread of wool is woven into divers figures and colours in a carpet.29

Fig. 8. Topiary art: clipped box hedges as envisioned by the mid-fifteenth-century monk Colonna in his illustrated work Hypnerotomachia PoliphilL

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The importance of topiary gardening varied in time and place. Among the Italians, early enthusiasm for at least the fancier forms began to wane toward the end of the sixteenth century. Increasing emphasis on the garden's overall design tended to curtail topiary ebullience. If fantasy required an outlet, it might take to stone rather than to vegetal sculpture: witness, the fantastic stone sculptures in Duke Vicino Orsini's garden at Bomarzo, near Viterbo, which included a winged dragon fighting a lioness (fig. 9), a colossal tortoise, bears, a Roman soldier seized in the trunk of an elephant, and giants.30 In France, topiary exuberance found expression in architectural rather than animal forms. The importance of green architecture in the ideal garden is clearly articulated in a work called Traite du jardinage selon les raisons de la nature et de l'art (1638) by Jacques Boyceau, an influential designer of his time and a forerunner of the style made famous by André le Nôtre. In this work, he favors rooms and pavilions made of trees, recommends that they be furnished with doors and windows and carefully maintained by constant binding and clipping. Even functional hedges, he says, can be transformed into an architectural feature in the landscape by being provided with fenestrations, arcades, and niches.31 In England, Francis Bacon expressed a distaste for topiary fantasies, characterizing them as mere toys for children. On the other hand, his conception of a hedge was full of playfulness. 'The garden," he wrote, "is best to be square, encompassed on all the four sides with a stately arched hedge Over the arches let there be an entire edge of some four feet high, framed also upon carpenters' work; and upon the upper hedge, over every arch, a little turret, with a belly enough to receive a cage of birds: and over every space between the arches some other little figure, with broad plates of round coloured glass gilt, for the sun to play upon."32 Despite strictures like those of Francis Bacon, topiary artworks continued to prosper in England throughout the seventeenth century, reaching indeed new heights of flamboyance toward the end of that period. Among the most flamboyant is that at Levens Hall, Westmorland, where a certain Beaumont began in about 1689 to create an outlandish green sculpture of umbrellas, mushrooms, and chessmen around the house (fig. 10). More significant as a measure of the taste of the times is how widespread these clipped hedges and trees were in the landscape. From the travel accounts of Celia Fiennes, written between 1685 and 1697, one

Fig. 9. A winged dragon fighting a lioness in the garden of Duke Vicino Orsini at Bomarzo, near Viterbo; mid sixteenth century. (Drawing by Wayne Howell)

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gains the impression that at least in certain parts of England they jumped to the eye. Fiennes wrote: "Epsom is 15 miles from London, there are great curiositys in cut hedges and trees almost before all doores; they have trees in rows which they cut up smooth and about 3 or 4 yards up they lay frames of wood in manner of a penthouse, so plat the branches on it and cut it smooth; they leave the stem of the tree to run up and then cut it clear to the top which they cut in round heads... ."33 Topiary whimsy of the sort at Levens Hall inspired satire, of which the most cutting and best known is that of Alexander Pope, written in 1712. Pope concocted a bill of sales and among his wares were: Adam and Eve in Yew; Adam a little shatter 'd by the fall of the Tree of Knowledge in the Great Storm; Eve and the Serpent very flourishing. The Tower of Babel, not yet finished. St. George in Box; his Arm scarce long enough, but will be in a condition to stick the Dragon by next April. A Quickset Hog, shot up into a Porcupine, by its being forgot a Week in rainy Weather. A Lavender Pigg with Sage growing in his Belly.34 Pope's ridicule marked the beginning of a powerful shift in English taste, one that extolled prospects less obviously constrained by the forces of art and more evocative of nature. Both high-shooting fountains and topiary exuberance declined in importance during the eighteenth century. On the other hand, topiary caprice did not disappear. It continued to have practitioners throughout the eighteenth century, and indeed in the nineteenth century as well as in our time (fig. 11 ). It would seem that people do not easily forfeit their right to use their shears as they see fit. Hedge sculpture is fun and challenging and gives people a sense of power. A gardener employed to work on the estate of Lord Covehithe at Easton, Suffolk, in 1942, had this to say: "Topiary, there was a lot ofthat. It was a very responsible job. You had only to make one bad clip and the pheasant becomes a duck.The gardeners usually made up these creatures themselves. We are tempted to cut out something terrible sometimes. ... But of course we never did. Even when we went on to mechanical hedgetrimmers we still kept topiary. There was a great pride in it, and in hedge-cutting of any sort."35 Lord Covehithe's gardeners may have resisted the temptation to cut out " something terrible," but some Calif or-

Fig. 10. The topiary garden at Levens Hall in Westmorland,

Fig. 11. An example of contemporary topiary caprice from the Green Animals Topiary Garden in Newport, Rhode Island.

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nians were less inhibited. In 1981, certain residents in San Diego brought charges against their neighbors for having clipped their hedges into the shape of male sex organs. These topiary works, the plaintiffs claimed, were obscene and had ruined their view.36 Gardeners can play with plants in many ways. One time-honored way is to dwarf them, a procedure that is part of a larger effort to reduce wilderness to the size of a toy. Control over nature feels absolute when nature can be made to sit in the palm of one's hand. Although topiary art had come to mean plant sculpture by the Renaissance period, the word topia had other meanings in antiquity, one of which was "miniature gardens," such as those found in the peristyles of Roman houses. These miniature gardens were probably derived from landscapes in bas-relief on certain courtyard walls that date back to Hellenistic times. Bas-relief, freestanding miniature, and mural landscape art (which we have discussed earlier) were all attempts to bring nature, transformed and tamed, into the confines of the house. Some of the houses at Pompeii had mural paintings of gardens; others had, in addition, three-dimensional miniature landscapes. One such miniature showed a tiny water staircase and a pool adorned with Lilliputian herms, statues, and representations of water birds. On Pliny's Tuscan estate dwarf trees and gardens were laid out in imitation of country scenes. Whether he used rocks to simulate mountains is not clear. Rocks, an important feature in Roman garden design, were placed around grottoes to give them an air of wildness. Such landscaping around the grotto may be regarded as an attempt at miniaturization. Although we find evidences of miniaturization in the Roman world, doubtless this process was and remains a specialty of the Orient. The miniature garden is a distinctive art form of China, Japan, and southeast Asia.37 Nature's grandeur is scaled down so that it can be accommodated in a portable basin, to be placed on a stand in the garden or the house. What are the motivations behind the making of miniature landscapes? The most general answer is the desire for power, and this answer would be correct in both a magico-religious and an aesthetic-artistic context. A typical miniature landscape in the Orient has three principal nonhuman components: rock, plants, and water. Rock stands for mountain, plants for trees or forest, and water for lake or sea. In China, which is a primary center of origin for miniaturization, rock may be the oldest as well as the most important of the three components. Without mountain,

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there is no landscape: the same is less true of plants and water. One of the earliest mountain models is the "hill censer" (po shan lu).38 Appearing some time during the Ch'in or early Han dynasty, it is a utensil of pottery or bronze fashioned into the shape of a cluster of peaked mountains. Holes in the po shan lu allow the incense burning inside to rise to the surface and waft over it like mist in the vicinity of towering peaks. To the Chinese, mountain and mist (rock and water) have been an age-old symbol of potency. This potency of nature the Chinese have sought to capture by various magico-religious devices, one of which is the hill censer. Another is the image of a sacred mountain hanging on the staff of a Taoist adept. By recreating a mountain on a much reduced scale the Taoist believes he can focus and contain its supernatural emanations and thus gain access to them. The further the size of a model is from that of the original, the more potent it is likely to be—an idea based on the analogy of the Taoist priest boiling down his medicinal stock to concentrate its essences.39 The miniature garden may contain only rock and sand. More typically, it contains also dwarf plants and water. The complete miniature has, in addition, tiny buildings and figurines: it is an entire world reduced in scale. When did this particular art form emerge? Literary evidence suggests that it existed in the T'ang dynasty, perhaps already in a high state of sophistication, and that it flourished during the Sung dynasty. Paintings of the Sung period show potted landscapes in people's houses, in their gardens (thus creating a model of nature within a model of nature), in outdoor areas where children play, and even in a silkworm nursery. Their presence in a silkworm nursery suggests that by this time the art form was no longer an elitist cultivation segregated from the work environment of ordinary people.40 The Western world tends to associate miniature gardens primarily with Japan, under the name of bonsai. Bonsai, however, is a Chinese term. Moreover, Japanese encyclopaedias assign a foreign origin to this art and note that it was introduced to the islands in the sixth or seventh century. Compared with Chinese practice, Japanese practice has retained a greater measure of aesthetic seriousness. Bonsai remains an elitist cultivation. One reason might be that in the course of the Tokugawa period (1603-1867), when peace was the norm, members of the warrior class found themselves increasingly burdened with leisure. A few gave up their high samurai status to go into the business world, but much free time

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remained. The more artistically inclined of these former warriors took up time-consuming hobbies, including the art of dwarfing trees. There appears to be a link here between the religio-asceticism of the military and the religio-aestheticism of bonsai. Dwarfing trees, as done by Oriental masters, is one of the most refined ways of playing with nature. Clearly dwarf trees exist in the wild, in response to harsh climate and soil. Bonsai gardeners are people who have succeeded in imitating nature's own unrelenting severity. To rise to the top of their profession such artist-craftsmen, like preeminent generals and surgeons, must not merely tolerate but take pleasure in the exercise of force—in wielding the knife, scalpel, and shears. Stunting plant growth as such, we should note, is a standard practice of horticultural art, one that is by no means limited to Oriental gardens. In the Western world, we find it taken up in the making of low and thick hedges. Eleanor Perènyi, in her book Green Thoughts, claims to discern a difference of attitude between European and American gardeners: Europeans are willing to turn potentially large trees into low dense screens with a regimen of pruning and training more sustained and savage than anything that American gardeners are willing to contemplate.41 It is, however, in the Orient rather than in Europe that the dwarfing and shaping of plants have reached their apogee. The history of these ancient practices has close ties with the desire to live to an old age and, if possible, forever. Taoism was an early source of inspiration. If the rock symbolized potency, the stunted and twisted plant stood for enduring life. In the same miniature garden, a gnarled dwarf tree might stand alongside a diminutive and bent human figure. Both are immortal. Moreover, both have achieved immortality through similar techniques. By slowing down the sap, a plant became stunted and took on the appearance of extreme old age; likewise, by slowing down the movement of breath around the body through respiratory exercises, the Taoist adept hoped to live to be a very old man, bent double with age, and able to enter the cavernous Other World as an immortal.42 Once the Chinese gardeners learned how to play freely with plant life, they sometimes succumbed to whimsicality. The religious significance of cavernous rocks and bent trees tended to be lost in games of power, and what the gardeners produced was more grotesque than either beautiful or portentous (fig. 12). In the twelfth century already, one could discern signs of excess in Emperor Hui-tsung's gardens, where the limbs of certain

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pine trees were knotted to look like canopies, cranes, and dragons (fig. 13). It says something of Chinese personality and culture that such extreme distortions have become an admired feature of the garden through the succeeding centuries, and that they remain an accepted practice in modern times. Countries that have come under Chinese influence show a similar penchant for torturing (from the Latin word for twisting) plant life. In Vietnam, the limbs of garden trees, like those in China, might be warped into the semblance of animals.43 In Japan, dwarfing and bending as in bonsai art have reached nimieties of refinement. Unlike ordinary garden trees which, though twisted, might still grow to several feet in height and would still have their roots in the common soil, the bonsai trees are only a few inches tall and their roots never touch the solid earth. To create a bonsai, the gardener must subject the plants to early and severe training. The plants themselves should be strong enough to withstand the rigors imposed on them. Pruning and wiring are basic techniques; others are tying, propping, and the application of jacks and weights. Open a modern bonsai gardener's kit and one will encounter an array of tools including a pair of side cutters for snipping wire; a thin screwdriver, with the upper edge bent at a 45 degree angle, to use as a cutting hook; a sharp penknife or scalpel; an assortment of copper wires, brushes, trowels, and tweezers. Any person who is aware of the contents of a tool kit and reflects upon what he finds there will question the view that the making of miniature gardens is a deeply humane art.44 Plant life has exigencies of its own that may conflict with human needs and desires. In dreams of the Other World, where perfection reigns, fruits and flowers often appear; they may well be an essential component of that perfection and yet attitudes toward them—and toward organic nature generally—are curiously ambivalent. In the Bible, Eden is a picture of organic innocence. By contrast, the City of God in Revelation is a thoroughly mineralized and bejeweled world in which neither tree nor water is to be found. In Zoroastrianism, the garden paradise is predictably filled with fruits and flowers, but it also has paths of burnished gold and pleasure pavilions of diamonds and pearls. Moreover, among those who qualify to enter this paradisiac world are the diggers of canals and builders of fountains and aqueducts—that is, people who have actively transformed nature and the earth.

Fig. 12. The ancient art of dwarfing and twisting trees is exemplified in this modern specimen in a Shanghai nursery. The trunk has been bent and wired until it has grown into a knot. (Drawing by Wayne Ho well)

Fig. 13. A "deer-shaped" tree in a modern Hang-chou garden. The "dragon-shaped" tree in the gardens of Emperor Hui-tsung (1082-1135) may have resembled this plant. (Drawing by Wayne Howeil)

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Trees, fruits, and flowers are all highly desirable. But they do not last, or they blossom at inconvenient times. Oriental potentates have shown an inclination to substitute or supplement the natural growths of the earth with those made of materials that are less subject to decay. In the gardens of Emperor Sui (reign A.D. 604-18), outside of Lo-yang, when the leaves had fallen from the maples in autumn, the trees and bushes were decked with leaves and flowers made of glistening fabrics; and in addition to real lotuses, the lake was adorned with artificial lotus blossoms.45 In Persia, under Islam, the love of trees, flowers, and fruits seems shadowed by the awareness that they do not last. Moreover, the impermanence of the organic hints at the limitation and impermanence of human power. Occupants of the Persian throne preferred the more enduring symbolism of the artificial tree. From an account by the poet Firdausi (ca. 940-1020), we learn that King Kay Khusraw possessed a tree which had a silver trunk and gold and ruby branches. In the Ghaznavid period of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the court was decorated with trees of gold flanked by artificial narcissi in pots of silver. Similar trees appeared at the Mongol court in Iran during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Materials other than noble metals and precious stones were also used. Craftsmen called the nakhlband, or "maker of artificial flowers," practiced an old though minor art in which paper, paste, wax, and paint were transformed into trees, flowers, fruits, and miniature gardens. People less wealthy than rulers and the nobility could afford these modest artworks, but they were not merely the ornaments of the less wealthy. During the Qajar period (1779-1925), vases containing paper flowers lined the avenue of approach to the ruler on his outdoor throne.46 Baghdad was the residence of the commander of the faithful, and thus a political and commercial center of the Arab world, for nearly five hundred years. Resplendent palaces and gardens were built on or near the banks of the Tigris during this period. Byzantine ambassadors, visiting Baghdad in the year 917, reported on some of the marvels. One of them was the new Kiosk (gausak\ meaning a pleasure house surrounded by gardens. In the gardens were seven hundred dwarf palms, the trunks of which were entirely covered with pieces of teakwood held in place by gilded copper rings. Arabs venerated the palm, the tree of their true home. However, they seem to have found the stem ugly, and rich men spent money dressing it up in costly materials. The palm, dwarfed and dressed, went part way to becoming a precious artifact. Going all the way was the

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mineral tree, a feature common to Byzantine and Arab courts. A supreme example of it stood in Baghdad's House of the Tree, a palace compound that impressed the Byzantine ambassadors even more than did the Kiosk. The tree itself had eighteen boughs of gold and silver and innumerable branches covered with fruits made of precious stones. On the branches perched gold and silver birds, which whistled and sighed in harmony when a breeze passed through.47 The opulence of the Orient made a deep impression on the Crusaders. From the twelfth century onward, European gardens showed increasing signs of a taste for pleasure and the glitters of artifice, reflecting the influence of Byzantine and Arab courts. We have already noted that certain trees in medieval European gardens had their crowns clipped into the shape of triple umbrellas on which artificial fruits might hang. Some of the May trees, around which people danced, were made of metal. In literature, even before the Crusades, Oriental influence had penetrated the West by way of the Byzantine court. Thus Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, after seeing the imperial palace of Constantinople in 968, was inspired to give a detailed account of the throne and of the golden tree with its singing birds. By the thirteenth century, under the sway of recurrent tales from the Crusaders, the tree of noble metal and precious stones on which mechanical birds sang had become a standard emblem of paradisiac beauty and mystery (for example, the golden tree and singing birds of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Titurel) in the poetry of the West.48 Although trees, once planted, stay put, their branches and foliage grow and change as though possessed of a will of their own that must be constantly disciplined. There is pleasure in overcoming recalcitrance; and pleasure in the growing plant itself when it responds to human care. Plants can be disciplined and cared for like pets, but at times even vegetal pets are a nuisance. Leaves from the potted ferns that hang next to the bay windows—a fashion in decor that had taken over upper-middle-class homes by the last quarter of the nineteenth century—would drop upon and litter the windowseats and floor. As servants are more difficult to find and keep, the temptation grows stronger to keep plants that make no demands at all, which exist only as artifactitious imitations. In some private homes and even more in commercial establishments, to cut expense and bother, artificial greenery and flowers are substituted for real ones. The city may find that it can no longer quite afford the upkeep of

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live trees and may think of using, instead, plastic ones to provide the basic services of shade, pleasingly varied forms, and color.49 But in the eyes of urbane designers, artificial plants are not mere substitutes faute de mieux. Aluminum trees are not intended to evoke pastoral nostalgia. What they do for a great city, especially to its entertainment district, is to enhance the ambience of glitter and glamor—to suggest a timeless world that denies the organic, with its inevitable hints of impermanence, growth and decay. Artificial trees are not a mere fad of the modern age. We have seen how venerable is the idea of the mineral tree and the mineral fruit. This desire for the inorganic, manifest in all high cultures, reflects a deep human ambivalence toward life.

5 ANIMALS: FROM POWERS TO PETS

In an offguard moment, C. S. Lewis assevered: 'The tame animal is in the deepest sense the only natural animal Beasts are to be understood only in their relation to man and through man to God." Evelyn Underhill, Lewis's friend, wrote in protest: "You surely can't mean that, or think that the robin redbreast in a cage doesn't put heaven in a rage but is regarded as an excellent arrangement. Your own example of the good-man, good-wife, and good-dog in the good homestead is a bit smug and utilitarian, don't you think, over against the wild beauty of God's creative action in the jungle and deep sea? And if we ever get a sideway glimpse of the animal-in-itself, the animal—existing for God's glory and pleasure and lit by His light, we don't owe it to the Pekinese, the Persian cat or the canary, but to some wild free creature living in completeness of adjustment to Nature a life that is utterly independent of man."1 Underhill tried to restore for Lewis a sense of the power and grandeur of animals. This sense, weak in modern men and women, was at one time strong throughout the world. Wild and awesome nature assumed both vividness and specificity in the shapes of wild animals and monsters. The frontier history of the Western world is full of tales of encounters with beasts, natural and supernatural, that were a part of the imagery of wilderness and threatening chaos. First the desert and the steppe in the Near East and later the dark forests of Europe and North America were thought to be inhabited by ferocious animals, monsters, and demons. As late as 1707 the Puritan divine Cotton Mather could write about the "dragons" and "fiery flying serpents" that haunted New England's 69

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primeval forest. Even late in the nineteenth century, the imagination of lumbermen working in the remote forests of the Upper Midwest was able to produce a lore of fantastical beasts.2 This fear of wilderness and tendency to populate it with strange animals was not, of course, confined to the West. It looms large in the frontier histories of other civilizations as well. For example, in China during the T'ang dynasty (618-907), when much of the tropical South was becoming known to settlers, poems that attempt to capture the flavor of the new country depict a fauna "turbulent with wild elephants, thunder-breeding dragons, monster sea turtles blowing up waves, and prodigious clams glowing in their subaqueous lairs." Even prose accounts tend to emphasize the awesome and the bizarre, such as reptiles and slimy invertebrates and "the hideous and demonic crawlers of the sodden soils."3 Initially, obscure beasts and monsters stood for the unknown and threatening forces of nature. Later, as the mind makes an effort to exert control, these inchoate forces were represented by more clearly envisioned animal deities and spirits, some of which were benign, many evil. Eventually, animal deities might be incorporated into the human world as part of an orderly worship. These steps, it is true, do not inevitably follow each other, but it is hard to conceive how the organized worship of an animal god can occur without an earlier stage, lost in prehistory, when the fear of unknown forces was diffuse and more likely to take the shape of protean monstrous presences. The ancient Greek and Egyptian civilizations that we know best through historical and archaeological records have already attained the later stages of perception. To the Greeks, mountain torrents, exemplifying the rougher side of nature, were inhabited by water spirits. In art and literature as well as in folk belief, these turbulent spirits appeared as horse-shaped daemons—the centaurs and the seilensi. Nymphs, by contrast, were shaped like beautiful maidens and stood for nature's more gentle and beneficent aspects.4 In Egypt, animals were incorporated as symbols of power into the heart of an articulated religious system in which, for instance, the falcon was another guise of the sun god Horus and the jackal was another guise of the god of the dead, Anubis. The animal itself might become an object of worship or be treated as though it were in itself sacred. This had happened to the cat. Originally, the cat was a symbol of the lioness, which was sacred to the goddess Basd. In time, however, the cat—all cats—assumed a sort of numinous power. When a

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cat died in the house, Herodotus reported, all the members of that household shaved their eyebrows. Dead cats were taken to the city of Bubastis where they were embalmed and later buried in sacred repositories. The investment of time and resources on the dead cats was immense. Excavators at the beginning of the twentieth century removed so many mummies that it was thought expedient to pulverize them and spread the product on the ground as fertilizer.5 The seemingly unlimited human capacity to see power and grandeur in the animal is illustrated by the lores of primitive cosmography and astronomy. In ancient Upper Egypt, the cow goddess of the sky (Hathor) was believed to have given birth to the sun. The sky was conceived as an immense cow whose legs are planted at the four corners of the earth and who is upheld by other gods. Modern astronomy retains the antiquated term zodiac, which means literally " the circle of animals." How could the ancient astronomers, as they gazed at the constellation of stars in the night sky, perceive any resemblance to animal forms? They surely could not— no more than we can do so today. They sought, rather, to honor the regions of the sky by naming them with the animals of their pantheon. These animals had such potency in the imagination of the ancients that they did not see any incompatibility of scale, absurd in its extremity, between the heavenly bodies on the one hand and animals on the other. Antiquity's conception of the stars as divine animals and as animalshaped spirits found its way into the beliefs of the Middle Ages. For example, the animal-headed Evangelists or saints depicted on medieval manuscripts of the hermeneutic and mystical tradition appear to be derived from the animal-headed demons that represented the stars and governed the fate of men in early Jewish, Gnostic, and Christian mystic lore. Science in the late medieval period was also willing to see the stars not only as animate but as "super-animals." In the early twelfth century, Adelard of Bath, one of the first English men of science to travel to Spain and Sicily and thus expose himself to Mediterranean beliefs, was by no means surprised when his nephew asked him the starkly literal question, "If the stars are animals, what food do they eat?"6 When people want to express their sense of the force of nature, both in the external world and in themselves, they have found and still do find it natural to use animal images. On the cylinder seals of the first allMesopotamian empire (dating from ca. 2500-2400 B.C.), the imagery of beasts was able to project—for the first time—a feeling of monumental

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power and ferocity. Ever since, through the later phases of Mesopotamian and Assyrian art down to medieval heraldry, beasts have served to symbolize strength and aggression. In the heraldic art of the Middle Ages, animals embody power in a positive sense. Thus the lion symbolizes the virtue of strength and the eagle that of courage. Evil power is represented by monsters made up of parts of animals, such as the lion-headed eagle and the griffin—an eagle-headed lion.7 Even in our time, when direct contact with wild animals is so rare, it is easy for us to associate strength and speed with some form of wild life. Power, even to the residents of a technopolis, is felt not as an abstract quantity measurable in dynes but as a bodily thrust and a passion. To project a feeling of power and speed, automobile manufacturers name their products Jaguar, Mustang, and Falcon, even though the clientele they wish to attract has no personal knowledge of these animals. Somehow jaguars and mustangs still project an image of power in a man-made world full of engines and machines that ought to convey energy in their own right, without borrowed feathers and claws from nature. While in art and religion humans show an enduring tendency to see animals as the embodiment of power and as larger than life, in day-to-day existence they unhesitatingly dominate and exploit animals in myriads of ways. Even in art the aggrandizement of animals may be an indirect but highly effective means of exalting man. Rampant beasts are "captured" in art. As sculptural motifs on thrones and palace grounds or as emblems on heraldic shields they magnify and glorify their human owners. Envisage a Byzantine emperor of the ninth century, enthroned and about to receive a foreign ambassador in his great hall. Golden lions lay prostrate before him, griffins stood by his side, and rising behind him was a golden plane tree on whose branches exquisite birds displayed their gold-enameled plumage. Upon the ambassador's entrance, the birds raised their wings and sang, the griffins turned toward him, and the lions waved their tails and roared.8 Thus mechanical wonders coated in noble metals and precious jewels substituted for real animals, but real animals—those with a reputation for ferocity and regal bearing—might also be kept in a potentate's court to underline the greater power and splendor of their master. In the court of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo was astonished by the perfect submissiveness of a flesh-and-blood lion. "You must know that a great lion is led into the Great Khan's presence; and as soon as it sees him it flings itself down prostrate before him with every appearance of deep

Fig. 14. Part of a second-century B.c. mosaic from Tunisia (now at the Museum of Antiquities, El-Djem), showing a Dionysian procession. The first known great animal procession was that of Ptolemy II (285-246 B.C.) on the feast of Dionysus.

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humility and seems to acknowledge him as lord. There it stays without a chain, and is indeed a thing to marvel at.*'9 Potentates were ingenious at devising events that accented their power. One such event was the procession, at which animals often played a prominent role. Processions were a custom of ancient Greece, conducted ostensibly in honor of Artemis or Dionysus (fig. 14). Theocritus, in the third century B.C., mentioned a parade in which "many wild animals, among them a lioness" took part. A procession on the grandest scale occurred during the reign of Ptolemy II (285-46 B.C.) at Alexandria, then the cultural center of the Hellenistic world. The file of people and beasts took a whole day to pass through the city's stadium. Following an image of Dionysus came a long train of animals of all kinds. What could a well-placed spectator see? Elephants, four to each chariot, drawing twenty-four chariots. Eight pairs of ostriches in harness. Wild asses in harness. Six pairs of camels laden with spices. Two thousand and four hundred hounds of Indian, Hyrcanian, Molossian, and other breeds. After the hounds came one hundred and fifty men carrying trees to which were attached wild animals and birds of all sorts. These were followed by cages containing parrots, peacocks, guinea-fowl, pheasants, and "Ethiopian birds." Then came Ethiopian breeds of sheep, twenty-six white Indian oxen, eight Ethiopian oxen, a large white bear, fourteen leopards, four lynxes, sixteen cheetahs, a giraffe, and a rhinoceros. Somewhere in the procession were also twenty-four lions of great size.10 In the second century A.D., the geographer Pausanias saw at Patrae a "most magnificent" procession, which was a regular feature of the annual festival of Artemis. An unusual feature in the train was a priestess riding in a car drawn by stags—unusual because it requires high skill to put stags in harness. Great pride was taken in taming difficult wild animals and making them perform. Training animals to perform had developed into a high art in the Greco-Roman world during the first century A.D. Performing elephants were especially popular in the arenas of the Augustan age. Pliny the Elder noted that it was common to make them throw weapons into the air, fight duels, and go through some kind of "musical ride." In the reign of Tiberius (A.D. 14-37), they were taught to walk on a tightrope. At a gladiatorial show given by Germanicus, probably in A.D. 12, a dozen elephants danced and dined. It was particularly amusing to see these great, hulking beasts pick their way with anxious care to their places at the banquet among the seated guests. Pliny witnessed performing bulls fight-

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ing or rolling over at a word of command, letting themselves be caught and lifted by the horns, and even standing like charioteers in cars going at a gallop.11 Seneca also alluded to the feats of tamers: one of them could put his hand into the lion's mouth, another dared to kiss a tiger, and a black dwarf could order an elephant to kneel or walk on a tightrope.12 The emperor Heliogabalus (A.D. 218- 22) was reported to have driven lions, tigers, and stags in harness. A favorite practical joke of his was to turn his tame lions, leopards, and bears into the rooms of his sleeping and drunken guests at night. The mutilated beasts, toothless and clawless, were really just the emperor's roly-poly playthings. They could still do harm but were trusted not to.13 Tame and rare animals of great value were on their way to becoming inanimate art objects. The Byzantine emperor's golden lion and the Mongol Khan's flesh-and-blood lion were both treasured possessions; and even though one beast was alive, its freedom to act was so minimal that it too might be regarded as a prestigious artifact. Seneca observed that some of the tame lions in Rome had their manes gilded, a procedure that could be taken as a step in the conversion of an animal into an art object. Even the fish might be played with thus. Roman nobles of the late Republican period built elaborate ponds at their coastal villas and stocked them with snakelike murenas. It was said of Crassus that one of his murenas was adorned with earrings and a jeweled necklace. Pliny reported that Antonia, the grandmother of Caligula, also had earrings put on her pet murena.14 An extraordinary example of this inclination is recorded for Mexico in the later part of the nineteenth century. Elegant women there took to the fancy of pinning hardy beetles (genus Zopherus) on themselves as crawling forms of adornment. To keep the adornments alive they must be put from time to time in damp, decayed timber. With such minimal care, the beetles could give satisfaction for months. As recently as 1962, Heini Hediger, then director of the Zurich Zoo, received some beetles from a lady returning from Mexico. On each, the upper side was studded with small flashing stones; a small screw ring had been inserted into the hard wing-covers and a glittering gold chain was attached to the ring.15 Potentates demonstrate their power by appearing to sustain a cosmos. One element ofthat cosmos is the menagerie. The keeping of menageries is a discriminative trait of high civilization, combining as it does the desire for order with the desire to accommodate the heterogeneous and the

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exotic. It has a long history. In the tomb of a grand vizier of Egypt's Old Kingdom (ca. 2500 B.C.) at Sakkara, archaeologists have found pictures of several kinds of antelope, some wearing collars, which means that they had either been bred in captivity or were caught and tamed when very young. Besides the addax (a large antelope with long spiral horns), the ibex (a wild goat), two different species of gazelles, and the oryx (an Arabian antelope with straight, sharp horns), archaeologists also discovered representations of monkeys and carnivores such as the hyena. Queen Hatshepsut sent collecting expeditions as far away as Somaliland. They brought back not only the tree that produced frankincense and other exotic plants, but also a large array of animals for her palace zoo, among them monkeys, greyhounds, leopards (or cheetahs), hundreds of very tall cattle, many species of birds, and a giraffe. King Solomon (reign ca. 974-37 B.C.) was the great farmer-zoologist of the Old Testament. The Bible records that, besides keeping great herds of beef cattle, sheep, and horses, he traded zoo animals with King Hiram of Tyre. "Once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, silver, and ivory, apes and peacocks" ( 1 Kings 10).16 In China, the founder of the Ch'in dynasty (221-07 B.C.) gathered the vanquished lords and their families to his capital and destroyed the houses they had left behind. Beyond the city limits, he walled off a vast hunting preserve in which he domiciled the rare beasts and birds that were tributes from the vassal states. The hunting preserve that had been turned into a park became, like the capital itself, a microcosm of the sprawling empire. Unicorns from Chiu Chen, Horses from Ferghana. Rhinoceros from Huang Chih Birds from T'iao Chih.17 In the European Middle Ages, kings and nobles kept rare fauna on the premises of their palaces and castles, and townsmen might have maintained bear pits or a lion house. The reasons people kept wild animals were varied, ambiguous, and hard to disentangle. Vulgar curiosity, pride of dominion, prestige, and scientific interest were among the more important motivations. Despite the early bond established between hermit monks and wild animals as part of the paradisiac ideal, monasteries did not see any need to maintain a zoo, for symbolic reasons, in their midst. Indeed, the order founded by Saint Francis ruled in 1260 "that no animal

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be kept, for any brother or any convent, whether by the Order or by any person in the Order's name, except cats and certain birds for the removal of unclean things. " A possible exception was the great abbey of Saint Gall, established in the ninth century in Switzerland. It is believed to have maintained a menagerie of rare animals, including badgers, marmots, bears, herons, and pheasants, presented to the monks as gifts.18 Secular potentates kept rare beasts mainly for reasons of pride and prestige. Nonetheless, a disinterested desire to know more about the bountiful manifestations of nature played a part. In this respect, Holy Roman emperor Frederick II of Sicily set an example for the great princes of the late Middle Ages and of the Renaissance. In Frederick's court, chivalry and learning were inseparably linked. The king believed that not only hunting and the martial arts but learning was a mark of nobility. To him, falconry was also a way of knowing bird life: it was a sport that simultaneously provided opportunities to study nature. Frederick was himself the author of a learned treatise called On the Art of Hunting with Birds, which he began in 1244 but left unfinished. Of course, wild captive animals also catered to his pride as king. On Frederick's many progresses and campaigns he surrounded himself with Saracen bodyguards followed by a train of scribes and astrologers, huntsmen and falconers. In addition, wild animals accompanied him—symbols of chivalry assembled in the flesh, as it were, to do homage to the king. "In November 1231, he arrived in Ravenna with a train of elephants, dromedaries, camels, panthers, gerfalcons, lions, leopards, white falcons and bearded owls," and in 1245, "the monks of Santo Zeno at Verona, in extending hospitality to the Emperor, had to entertain with him an elephant, five leopards, and twenty-four camels."19 Perhaps the greatest zoo of premodern times was that of the Aztecs in pre-Conquest Mexico. Accounts left by Hernando Cortez and Diaz del Castillo tell us that Lord Montezuma possessed a magnificent pleasure garden in which, among other wonders, rare aquatic birds lived in ten pools of water. The birds received food appropriate to their species. Worm eaters were fed worms, the corn eaters corn, fish eaters fish. Some three hundred keepers were employed exclusively to watch over these birds. The animals even had their own physicians. In one particularly large and beautiful house, Cortez noted, were kept many species of birds of prey. On the first floor of the same building were housed lions, tigers, wolves, foxes, and cats of every species. Both the birds of prey and the

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mammalian carnivores were fed poultry and, according to Diaz, also the flesh of human sacrificial victims. In another house lived human dwarves, hunchbacks, and other sorts of deformed men and women, each in a separate room. Like the other animals, the human exhibits also had their guardians.20 The inclusion of humans among the animals of Montezuma's menagerie is a reminder of the fact that to people of power humans too can be treated and "valued" as curiosities and pets. History swells with examples, which I will take up in later chapters. Here I should like to focus on the idea of public exhibition, as in circuses and zoos. Humans are put on display alongside of other animals, thus strongly implying that such humans are more like monkeys and bears than they are like "normal" people. But the same juxtaposition leads spectators to view the captive animals in a special way. Animals are like humans, only more openly carnal and sexual, more openly and therefore more disarmingly absurd. These aspects of animals are a major source of attraction for visitors to the modern zoo, as humans incarcerated in asylums were to their visitors in an earlier era. Why put animals and humans on display? The correct and obvious answer is that they provide entertainment. Circuses of Roman antiquity were places of violence and bloodshed, and although they did indeed exhibit wild animals and human captives from foreign lands it was not so much the exotic appearance of these live imports as their enforced violence and killing that drew the crowds. The modern circus, which dates back to the closing years of the eighteenth century, was by comparison a very mild affair. Animals and people entertained by their acrobatic skills, or as in freak shows outside the big tent by simply being themselves, or by behaving as the paying customers expected them to behave, that is, according to stereotype. A major figure in the modern history of the circus is the American showman P. T. Barnum. His attitude toward his animal and human charges was tellingly indiscriminate. Just before his fall season in 1843, Barnum's orangutan fell sick. He cursed the beast for her expense and trouble. "D—n the luck," he wrote to his manager, "I have puffed her high and dry—got a large transparency and a flag ten by sixteen feet painted for her." Barnum had set great hopes on a goat, "but he shits so I can do nothing with him " Barnum also had high aspirations for the American Indians whom he advertised as brutal savages just brought back from killing white men in the Far West, but unfortunately for the

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showman, his human exhibits turned out to be "lazy devils" who preferred to lie about the museum rather than act ferocious.21 The word museum is used advisedly. Barnum displayed his wares in places called museums. That word suggests to our mind an institution of learning and of dignity. And this was indeed how enlightened Europeans and Americans of the late eighteenth century conceived the museum: for them, the proper display of nature had a high educational value. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, thanks to the spirit of showmanship that succeeded in drawing crowds of sensation-seeking (mostly lower-class) spectators, museums—with the exception of a few national institutions—had lost their serious purpose and had become primarily places for entertainment—places, as one American educator put it in 1852, "for some stuffed birds and animals, for the exhibition of monsters, and for vulgar dramatic performances."22 In the twentieth century, museums have regained their original high calling. The exhibits in a modern natural history museum are not intended to be mere objects of amusement. They are still supposed to give pleasure but pleasure of a thoughtful kind. Museums have moved away from the unimaginative display of stuffed birds and plaster Indians on pedestals or in glass cases. Instead, they offer well-designed dioramas showing the habitats of animals and humans in three dimensions. As visitors walk down the hall, they might see through one window penguins sunning themselves on the ice fields of Antarctica and through another an Eskimo family performing household chores outside an igloo in the Arctic wastes; or they might encounter across one glass pane hyenas rampaging through an African bush and across another Bantu herdsmen corralling their cattle. In a museum of natural history, neither the models of animals nor those of humans attempt to reproduce gestures and behaviors that merely amuse. What the visitors see are the normal activities of life. Nevertheless, both animals and humans are putting on a show: the context of illuminated diorama, glass window, and darkened hall makes this theatrical element clear. And notice this fact. In a modern natural history museum, both humans and animals are on display, as peculiar animals and people were on display in circuses and in the Barnum-type of museum. An important distinction, of course, is that the exhibits of a modern museum are all models of live beings and not the live beings themselves. In a modern zoo, live animals are exhibited. Conspicuously absent behind the bars of a cage is the species Homo sapiens. David Garnett, in his

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novel A Man in the Zoo (1924), imagines a man who offers himself to be shown as a member of the human species among the monkeys of the zoo. Garnett's idea is not so fanciful as perhaps he himself believed: exhibiting humans along with other animals, as we have noted, is ah old and enduring game. Modern zoos emerged, however, out of the enlightened views of scientists at the end of the eighteenth century and during the early part of the nineteenth century. These people were seriously concerned with the scientific understanding of nature and with education. The idea of exhibiting humans would have deeply offended their sensibility. It is true that nineteenth-century society was still highly stratified; some peo* pie were deemed superior and others were thought to belong to the lower classes, and that term was used indiscriminately of the laboring poor and of the higher animals. Nevertheless, conspicuous rudeness or condescension to another human person was no longer acceptable. Toward captive animals, however, society was and is far more permissive.23 Although the purposes of a modern zoo are straightforward and commendable, human experiences of the zoo are likely to be ambiguous and mixed. The zoo, besides providing an opportunity for visitors to appreciate the variety and splendor of nature, allows them to feel superior to the caged beasts and to acknowledge aspects of behavior, such as eating and copulation, that they find disturbing and faintly disgusting when practiced by themselves. One of the pleasures of visiting a zoo is feeding the animals (fig. 15). The act is generous and the pleasure is innocent, although both derive from a base of superiority and of power. Making another being eat out of our hand—that yields a special thrill all the greater if the animal is first made to beg and if it is large enough to crush us in another setting less structured in our favor. Visitors also derive merriment simply out of watching carnivores eat. Our eating is wrapt in ritual. The more civilized we are or think we are, the more uncomfortable we feel toward acts of devouring—especially of flesh—that support our own lives and that, in a more general and larger sense, lie at the foundation of the most refined culture. At the zoo we can confront this fact, not in ourselves, but in animals toward which we feel superior. The public, as zoo officials know, grows excited over the sight of lions devouring large chunks of bloody meat. So popular with the public is this simple act of survival that managers at the zoo may feel obliged to feed the lions once a day even though in the wild they eat a hearty meal at most once a week.

Fig. 15. Feeding animals in the London zoo. Cartoon by Richard Doyle in Punch, November 19, 1849.

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Monkeys are a major source of attraction. The director of a famous circus grew indignant when not a half dozen visitors looked at a rhinoceros that had cost him twelve thousand dollars, while throngs crowded in front of a group of monkeys worth only forty-five.24 Why do monkeys, even though they are not really rare, enjoy such popularity? One reason, no doubt, is that they resemble humans. Visitors can stare and laugh at them openly. Some visitors are especially attracted by the easy sexual behavior of the monkeys. Voyeurism is forbidden except when applied to subhumans. Monkeys, however, resemble humans so much that officials in some zoological gardens want them excluded on principle. Hediger observes that "in one of the largest zoos in the world a spacious open-air enclosure for baboons had to be pulled down because its inmates had behaved 'indecently.'"25 Animals of erect posture, according to Hediger, have a special appeal for zoo visitors. Could it be because an upright stance makes an animal seem more human? Most large animals have horizontal postures. A conspicuous exception is the bear, which may partly explain why it is a favorite with the public. Dogs are never so appealing as when they sit up and beg. A fish that has won worldwide approval, even among those who live inland and have never seen it, is the sea horse (Hippocamus). It is the only vertical fish. Ornaments made in the shape of sea horses are worn by women. Parrots and owls are vertical birds. The parrot is "almost human" with its upright posture and capacity for imitating human speech. The owl was a symbol of wisdom in ancient Greece and subsequently in other European culture areas, but it fails to command approval everywhere, no doubt in part because of its nocturnal life.26 The earliest modern zoos, those of Paris and London, were scientific enterprises. Public interest led to their opening to subscribers from outside the membership of scientific societies and to the establishment of public zoos in a number of European cities by 1860: besides Paris and London, these included Dublin, Bristol, Berlin, Frankfurt, Antwerp, and Rotterdam. Distinguished scientists such as Charles Darwin and Francis Galton were frequent visitors of animals at the London zoo. Artists, too, as students of nature found it rewarding to call on a Sunday outing. The great mass of callers, however, came for amusement rather than for any deeper appreciation of nature. Until well into the twentieth century, the crowds tended to be rowdy and cruel. Keepers had to be constantly on

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guard. A former keeper of the Moscow zoo wrote: "All day long a huge, annoying and rowdy crowd paraded before the cages. This crowd, which would have been panic-stricken by the sight of a single one of these beasts uncaged, delighted in seeing them so disarmed, humiliated and debased. The mob avenged its own cowardice with boorish calls and shakes of the animals' chains, while the keepers' protests were countered by the incontestable reply, 'I paid for it.'"27 This behavior toward caged animals bears a close resemblance to how, in an earlier time, people acted toward caged mental patients. In the early modern period (1600 to 1750), Europeans viewed the lunatic as the lowliest human creature, someone reduced almost to a state of pure animality though still possessing a soul that could be saved. Such was the low status of the mentally deranged that where the criminal and the madman were confined together, pity went to the criminal for the company he had to keep. Yet not only the rabble but the most refined members of society flocked into London's Bethlehem Hospital for the insane (popularly known as Bedlam) for entertainment. Just as people in the early part of the twentieth century might cruelly tease animals caged in the zoo, so in this earlier era visitors to Bedlam deliberately tried to enrage the inmates chained to their cells or intoxicate them with gin so as to obtain a wilder performance. Before its doors were finally closed to the public in 1770, Bethlehem Hospital came to admit 96,000 visitors annually. Receipts from the gates supported the institution.28 In colonial America, treatment of the insane resembled that of Europe, The first general hospital—the Pennsylvania Hospital—opened its doors to patients in 1756. The mentally ill were confined to the cellar. They were often chained to iron rings fixed on the floor or wall of their cells. The keeper carried a whip and used it freely. Lunatics were regarded as dangerous but also entertaining wild animals. Local people treated their out-of-town guests by bringing them to observe and tease the inmates. A cruel fantasy of the time was that the insane, like wild beasts, were insensitive to weather and therefore could be kept in their cells naked. The enlightened Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) fought against this sadistic practice, but he was hardly free of the notion that mad people were like animals. He believed, for example, that the insane could be " tamed" by the total deprivation of food, citing in support of his idea the fact that in India wild elephants were subdued by denying them victuals

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until they became thin shadows of their former selves. He also suggested that the methods used in breaking wild horses be applied to violent patients.29 We have already noted that monasteries, despite their aspiration to being a paradise on earth, excluded animals other than useful livestock from their midst. On the other hand, in the Western world, holy men from Androcles to Saint Francis have had the reputation of being able to charm wild beasts. In idealized pictures of the Garden of Eden, all creatures (including wild animals) lived in harmony under the benign overlordship of man. These pictures, as people have always known, could not be translated into reality unless the animals were harmless, tame, or under strict control. The resistance of wild animals to human control and the fact that the lion did'not willingly lie down with the lamb aroused strong feelings of ambivalence in Europeans of the early Christian era and through the Middle Ages. It was sometimes argued, by the Eastern Church for instance, that animals were the incurably depraved instruments of Satan. Significantly, no animal appears in Dante's description of the Garden of Eden, and Dante himself was assailed by a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf when he emerged from the gloomy forest where the Divine Comedy begins. In G. B. Andreini's L'Adamo, sacra representárteme ( 1617), several illustrations of Eden depict it as a formal garden in which wild animals obviously have no place. They are indeed shown, but at the entrance of the garden gate, with Adam naming them. In John Parkinson's Paradise in sole ( 1629), the frontispiece is a picture of the Garden of Eden. No animals are depicted in it, however. In their place is that curious creature known as the Scythian lamb, part plant and part animal, that people in the seventeenth century still thought to exist in the wilds of Asia.30 One animal can be admitted to paradise without hesitation and that is the bird. In medieval thought, birds resemble man in that they have two legs; they fly and hence resemble angels. These characteristics were interpreted to mean that birds did not participate in the original revolt against God. They were fit denizens of both the heavenly and the terrestrial paradise. In the Oberrheinischer Meister's "little paradise garden" (ca. 1410), the Virgin sits reading and the Child is shown playing with his Mother. There are two trees and many flowering plants but no animals other than songbirds. The Eden of Guillaume Salluste du Bartas

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( 1544-90) contains a thousand sorts of birds. Milton's Paradise is full of avian choirs.31 John Evelyn ( 1620-1706) wanted to build an aviary in his botanic garden large enough to hold five hundred small birds, including linnets and yellow hammers, finches, larks, thrushes, blackbirds, and robins. Since antiquity, sound has been an integral component of gardening art. The perfect environment, whether Elysium or Eden, should offer not only visual but also aural delights among which is the harmonious blend of bubbling water and warbling songbirds. By the Renaissance period, birds have come to be so closely associated with the garden that the earliest books on horticultural art, such as La Maison rustique (1572), discussed critically the relative musical merits of avian species. Birds, however, could not be allowed to fly free if their purpose was to provide concerts for human entertainment. An old custom called for the placing of caged birds in a secluded part of the garden and then covering up the cages with foliage so that visitors could hear them and enjoy the illusion of wandering in a natural forest.32 The botanic garden, sometimes spoken of as "the whole world in a chamber," emerged in the enlightened centers of Europe during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Its proud boast was that it contained specimens from "the remote Quarters of the World." A characteristic design of the botanic garden shows it as divided into four parts to suggest both the idea of the quadripartite paradise of Persian origin and the idea of the four continents.33 A problem with these botanic gardens, as their builders realized, is that they were only botanic. Where were the animals? Without animals, such gardens could neither claim to be a representation of the original Eden nor suggest man's dominion over the whole of animate nature. Architect-designers did try to include animals but these had to be kept in separate cells. Dead and stuffed animals were introduced into the grounds of some botanic gardens. These were all tacit admissions of the defeat of an aspiration which Europeans could not altogether give up, even in the seventeenth century—an aspiration rooted in the myth of Adam's power over beasts. The dream that ferocious animals, on the approach of man, would kneel in docility and thus be a fit companion in a perfect world may be among the most vainglorious of human aspirations. It is not confined to Western culture. Evidences of it appear in other high cultures as well. Wherever man evisages a perfect world, elements of this dream occur and recur. Attempts to translate the dream into reality encounter the problem

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of how animals can be brought into the garden and made to seem a natural and integral part of it. Some of these attempts we have already noted. They will be recapitulated briefly here in order to underline the human need to associate with animals and to do so on the principles of dominion and control, in Eden as in practical life. Wild and exotic animals have been considered an important component of the great hunting parks and gardens of imperial China. With sufficient space and number of caretakers, the animals could be kept in fenced-in compounds or allowed to run more or less free. The emperor in such a park could feel himself in tune with and in command of the whole of nature. The great hunting park-garden was, however, the exception even for an emperor. Most gardens were of a very modest size, especially those within the walls of a city. How could the animal presence be introduced into these small-scale, idealized worlds? There have been a number of solutions. Thus, even in the smallest garden, animals could be given a token presence as birds in cages and as fishes in small rock pools. Animals of stone and bronze substituted for live ones. Lions guarding the entrances to garden gates and halls were especially popular. These beasts managed to look simultaneously fierce and tame. They reared their backs and bared their teeth but, on the other hand, they showed neatly arranged swirling locks and doglike features.34 In imperial gardens, sculptures of the deer and reptiles such as the dragon and the tortoise were often placed in front of the halls. The animal presence was also felt in the distorted limbs of trees and in deeply weathered limestone (figs. 3,13). Both plants and rocks were shaped and arranged to suggest not only wild animals but even monsters. It is a curious fact that the Chinese garden, which supposedly represents an ideal world of harmonious beauty, should so often contain images of ferocity and strife. Bizarrely shaped boulders protruded from a ridge in the emperor Hui-tsung's fabulous garden outside of K'ai-feng. A monk observed that they resembled "tusks, horns, mouths, noses, heads, tails and claws," and that "they seemed to be angry and protesting against each other." Near the boulders was a display of contorted pine trees, "their branches twisted round and knotted to form all kinds of shapes, like canopies, cranes, dragons." Animals and animal passions were admissible into the garden only as art objects made of plants and rocks.35 In the European garden, animals made their presence felt in a variety of ways. A whole zoo might be carved out of yew and box hedges. One could

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see animal images in water shooting out of the mouth of a dolphin or out of the claws of a crayfish, models of animals (perhaps even mechanical birds) in the neighborhood of a grotto, stuffed animals in galleries that bordered a botanic garden, and beasts sculpted in stone, such as the fantastic display in the sixteenth-century villa of Duke Vicino Orsini. So many animal sculptures might be packed into a garden that it could seem the model of a zoo. The gardens of Henry VIII are a case in point. Henry took special delight in his "beestes," which were carved figures of animals painted and gilt, stuck on the tops of posts and placed everywhere about the grounds. In one small garden alone there were " 11 harts, 13 lions, 16 greyhounds, 10 hinds, 17 dragons, 9 bulls, 13 antelopes, 15 griffins, 19 leberdes, 11 yallys [horned, mythical beasts], 9 rams and the lion on top of the mount."36 The Edenic ideal calls for the presence of both plants and animals, which unfortunately do not mix. The usual solution is to isolate the animals or use models. In the second half of the eighteenth century, a radically new solution was introduced by Lancelot Brown, who rid the garden of flower beds, trimmed hedges, and formal avenues of trees in favor of broad expanses of undulating turf. On this turf, cattle and deer could graze picturesquely right up to the front of the house. For the first time, animals (albeit very tame ones) were brought to the center of the garden stage.

6 ANIMAL PETS: CRUELTY AND AFFECTION

Animal pets in the affluent nations of the Western world receive, as we all know, lavish care. In the United States, more than half of the households have a dog or a cat, or both, and some six billion dollars are spent on them every year.1 Moreover, numerous reports, stories, and anecdotes attest to the personal devotion of owners to their charges. On the other hand, pets exist for human pleasure and convenience. Fond as owners are of their animals, they do not hesitate to get rid of them when they prove inconvenient. In the United States, for instance, there is the revealing statistic that approximately 15 percent of the total estimated dog population is destroyed yearly in dog compounds and animal shelters. Another revealing fact is that the majority of Americans keep their dogs for only two years or less. In other words, for these Americans dogs are kept so long as they are playful, endearing, and asexual pups. When they grow to a size that makes their presence in the house problematical and, above all, when they begin to respond to the imperatives of their sexual nature, the temptation to destroy them increases.2 One partial solution is neutering. No matter how fond owners are of their pets, the knife is allowed to be used on them with little or no regret because that is the only way they can remain manageable and "clean" playthings within the house. A sample population in Minnesota's Twin Cities area say that female pets ought to be spayed because their blood is "messy," "annoying to see," "dirty," and will stain carpets and furniture. Castrated male pets, they say, have the advantage of being more docile and less smelly. Apart from a number of practical conveniences to people of 88

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middle-class background, neutering makes it possible for them to forget the insistent sexuality of all animals. The cruelty of castration is suggested by the tools used. A modern company offering "all your animal health care needs" lists a variety of instruments that, together with accompanying diagrams, must shock all but the most hardened reader. How is one to choose? Should one use a relatively simple castrating knife ("a doublebiaded scalpel and hoe in pocket guard") or a Double Crush Whites Emasculator? a Baby Burdizzo only nine inches long or a Stainless Steel Emasculatome? Farmers have to confront these instruments; pet owners in the cities, a much more genteel breed, are able to look the other way.3 Cruelty to animals is deeply embedded in human nature. Our relation to pets, with all its surface play of love and devotion, is incorrectly perceived unless this harsh fact is recognized. Cruelty in the sense of indifference to the pain and needs of another being is a product of necessity. Unlike some primates, humans are omnivores, with animal flesh an important constituent of their diet. Moreover, for half a million years protohumans and humans have been not merely scavengers but active and increasingly skilled hunters. To become skilled hunters, humans must have taken a certain pleasure in their task of running down prey and killing it. Work essential to livelihood was also a sort of game. Devising various methods of killing became a challenge that could be exciting and fun. The hunter's body and mind, and with them a disposition toward activity and unconcern for suffering, are thus an inescapable part of our heritage. Indifference to the pain of animals has been frequently observed among hunter-gatherers. Consider, for instance, the Gikwe Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, a people known for their gentleness toward each other and toward outsiders. But this gentleness cannot apply, for obvious reasons, to the animals they have to kill for food. A certain callousness toward animal suffering is evident even when hunger is not a pressing question. Elizabeth Thomas, in her book The Harmless People, describes an event which, because it is quite ordinary, reveals a hunting people's deep, unreflexive attitude toward animal life. A man named Gai was about to roast a tortoise which belonged to his infant son Nhwakwe. Gai placed a burning stick against the tortoise's belly. The tortoise kicked, jerked its head, and urinated in profusion. The heat had the effect of parting the two hard plates on the shell of the belly, and Gai thrust his hand inside. While the tortoise struggled, Gai slit the belly with his knife

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and pulled out the intestines. "The tortoise by now had retreated part way into its shell, trying to hide there, gazing out from between its front knees. Gai reached the heart, which was still beating, and flipped it onto the ground, where it jerked violently." Meanwhile, the baby Nhwakwe came to sit by his father. "A tortoise is such a slow tough creature that its body can function although its heart is gone. Nhwakwe put his wrists to his forehead to imitate in a most charming manner the way in which the tortoise was trying to hide. Nhwakwe looked just like the tortoise."4 The Bushman God was equally indifferent to animal life. There is the story of Pishiboro (one of the names of God) and his elephant wife, who was killed by Pishiboro's brother while pretending to delouse her. "The younger brother then built a fire, cut off the breast of the elephant wife, and roasted it. When it was cooked he sat up on the body of the elephant wife to eat it." Pishiboro, espying his brother, wondered: "Ah, can it be that my younger brother has killed my wife and is sitting on her body?" He ran forward and found his worst suspicions confirmed. "Pishiboro was wildly angry, but his younger brother handed him some of the roasted breast, which presently Pishiboro ate. The younger brother looked down at Pishiboro and said in a voice filled with scorn: 'Oh, you fool. You lazy man. You were married to meat and you thought it was a wife.' Pishiboro saw that this was true, so he sharpened his knife and helped his younger brother with the skinning."5 Eskimos are widely admired for their courage and superb skill in hunting. Not all their hunting devices require contact with the animal and physical courage, however. A few are as ingenious as they are cruel. One such device works as follows. A sharpened piece of springy whalebone is tied into a U-shape, covered with fat, and left out to freeze. Then the thongs are cut and the frozen baits strewn around. Hungry foxes and wolves swallow the baits. In their stomachs, the fat thaws and the whalebone springs open, piercing the animal's interior organs and killing it,6 The traditional Eskimo economy makes the people absolutely dependent on the animals around them for food and as raw materials, plants being quite insignificant in these roles. The result would seem to be a sense of guilt and of fear, which is recognized in speech and legend. A legend has it that when Eskimos die of violence—as in accident, suicide, or homicide— they go straight to the Happy Hunting Ground. But if they are killed by an animal they may have to do a year of penance in the underworld of the Sea Spirit. Such death seems deserved and therefore does not call for imme-

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díate compensation.7 More directly, guilt and fear are eloquently expressed by the Iglulik Eskimo Aua in the following speech: "The greatest peril of life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we have to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, like we have, souls that do not perish with the body, and which must therefore be propitiated lest they should avenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies."8 Hunters may respect but they do not love the game they hunt. By contrast, pastoralists spend much time taking care of their livestock and are known to show strong affection toward it. Consider the Nuer of the Upper Sudan as an example. Although the Nuer grow some millet and maize, they are preeminently pastoralists dependent on the cattle for their livelihood. Cattle, to the Nuer, are not just a resource to be used. Far from it. They love their cattle. Moreover, this love appears to be without condescension. Cattle stand in quasi-equality with people. Personal names suggest such a relationship. Men may be called by names that refer to the form and color of their favorite oxen; women take names from oxen and from the cows they milk. Personal care of and pride in cattle among the Nuer is conveyed, touchingly, by Evans-Pritchard in the following paragraph. When [a young man's] ox comes home in the evening he pets it, rubs ashes on its back, removes ticks from its belly and scrotum, and picks adherent dung from its anus. He tethers it in front of his windscreen so that he can see it if he wakes, for no sight so fills a Nuer with contentment and pride as his oxen. The more he can display the happier he is, and to make them more attractive he decorates their horns with long tassels, which he can admire as they toss their heads and shake them on their return to camp, and their necks with bells, which tinkle in the pastures.9 Nevertheless, cattle are food and resource to the Nuer, They provide milk, meat, and blood. Their skins are a primary raw material for making the meager goods that the Nuer possess. Obtaining milk and blood from cattle presents no moral dilemma. Blood is not a staple article of diet; moreover, the Nuer believe that bloodletting practiced from time to time is good for the cow or the ox. But killing the beloved cattle for meat does present a problem, which the Nuer evade by pretending to eat only the

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flesh of animals that have already been slaughtered for ceremonial and sacrificial purposes. An excuse for a ceremony or a sacrificial rite is, however, never hard to find. After such an occasion, the scramble for carcass is uninhibited. Any animal that dies a natural death is eaten. Even when a youth's favorite ox dies he must be persuaded "to partake of its flesh, and it is said that were he to refuse his spear might avenge the insult by cutting his foot or hand on some future occasion." The Nuer recognize the dilemma of having to kill that which they love. "Nuer are very fond of meat, and declare that on the death of a cow, The eyes and the heart are sad, but the teeth and the stomach are glad.' f A man's stomach prays to God, independently of his mind, for such gifts.'"10 Pastoralists do not exist for the sake of their livestock. It is the other way around, although this exploitative relationship is fudged by the care that cattle herders must give to their charges, a care that in specific instances can lead to genuine affection. "The Lord is my shepherd." The deep irony of addressing Christ or a bishop as shepherd seems to escape most people. To this day, the pastoral metaphor for the just ruler, with roots in Plato as well as in the Old and the New Testament, is used in all innocence. George Santayana, in his book Dominations and Powers ( 1951 ), observes: If the shepherd were, as he must have been in the beginning, the owner of the sheep, his care for the flock would be naturally prompted and limited strictly to his proprietory interests. He would not love sheep at all, but only wool and mutton Sheep are safe from wolves, but often deformed and helpless in their sodden pastures. It is a fate comparable to that of eunuchs or ladies of the seraglio, or lapdogs or other favourites of tyranny. If some fabulist ventured to put a description of their keeper into the sheep's mouth, it would surely not depict him as a ministering angel, but as a driver, a gaoler, a shearer, and a butcher.11 Hunting large animals and herding livestock are predominantly male occupations. What, we may wonder, is the relationship between women and animals in preliterate societies? Where hunting contributes significantly to livelihood, the men provide meat by chasing down and'killing large game at some distance from camp while the women scavenge or trap small animals close to camp. Women do hunt and kill, but their preys— small rodents and reptiles, grasshoppers and caterpillars, and such like—

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have no prestige. For them, there is no glamor or pleasure in killing. Women share the task of dismembering the animals brought home by male hunters, and of course they do the cooking or help do it» Women's hands, like men's, are covered in blood, but for them the activity is a necessity, not a game and not surrounded by any mystique. Although women kill and dismember animals, they may also grow fond of some. On islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, where the inhabitants hunt and fish as well as carry on some form of agriculture, pups and piglets are fed and nurtured by the women and become their playthings and pets. In 1825, J. Macrae wrote: I noticed a young woman walking along the street, and at the same time suckling several puppies that were wrapped up in a piece of tapa cloth hanging round her shoulder and breasts. This custom of suckling dogs and pigs is common to the natives of the Sandwich [Hawaiian] Islands. These animals are held by them in great estimation, little inferior to their own offspring, and my journeys to the woods in search of plants often afforded me an opportunity of being an eyewitness to this habit.12 Similar observations have been made by European explorers and scholars on other islands. As recently as 1950, a photographer was able to take a striking snapshot of a Papuan mother nursing with one breast a child of about two to three years old and with the other breast a piglet (fig.16).13 Yet the tenderly nurtured animals are destined for consumption. Dog meat, in particular, is regarded by Pacific Islanders as a great delicacy. "Hawaiians," wrote a visitor in 1868, "have always been epicures in the article of dog meat. The kind they raise for their feasts is small and easily fattened. They are fed only on vegetables, especially kalo, to make their flesh more tender and delicately flavored." Dogs suckled by women "are called 'ilzo poli* and are most esteemed." There is a suggestion here of dogs reared deliberately for the quality of their flesh. Pets they may be but are nonetheless eaten without much regret when desired as food. On the other hand, it has also been reported that the esteem and affection for a breast-fed pet may go so deep that killing it for food becomes impossible. A pup might be selected as the companion and protector of a child. If the child should die, the dog is killed and buried with its young master as a playmate in the other world.14

Fig. 16. Papuan (New Guinea) mother nursing her child and a piglet. Photograph taken by Douglas Baglin in 1950.

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The old English\word game means both amusement and hunted wild animals. Killing, even when it is a necessity, is also a sport. The anthropologist S. L. Washburn speaks of our "carnivorous psychology," which was fully developed by the Middle Pleistocene period, several hundred thousands of years ago. "It is easy," he says, "to teach people to kill, and it is hard to develop customs which avoid killing.... The extent to which the biological bases for killing have been incorporated into human psychology may be measured by the ease with which boys can be interested in hunting, fishing, fighting, and games of war. It is not that these behaviors are inevitable, but they are easily learned, satisfying, and have been socially rewarded in most cultures.15 Among so-called civilized peoples, hunting is the traditional sport of kings and of the nobility. It has glamor. It is a martial art, the most highly organized and splendid of sports. In theory, the hunted animal should be a worthy antagonist in speed and cunning, or ferocity. It must have a chance to escape or fight back. Otherwise the killing would simply be the work of a butcher, not of a sportsman. The playful character of hunting and fishing, of course, is seen entirely from the human viewpoint. To the hunted animal, obviously, the chase is not a game but a matter of life and death in which the opportunities to escape are, more often than not, cruel illusions. Hunting is a blood sport. Notwithstanding its modern-age aesthetic of red coats and of brass bugles flashing in the morning sun, it retains its flavor of violence in mud, sweat, blood, and death cries. Seemingly far more genteel is another quintessential activity of high culture, namely, breeding animals so that they turn into playthings and aesthetic objects. This activity presupposes an order of material abundance such that animals need no longer be seen as potential food, or even as sacrificial victims in rituals that have the promotion of fertility as their aim. It speaks of leisure and skill, and the desire on the part of those thus endowed to manipulate the reproductive processes of animals so that they turn into creatures of a shape and habit that please their owners. As illustrations, consider two well-documented animals, the goldfish and the dog, the one bred purely as an animal pet and the other for a variety of reasons. Since the nineteenth century, the goldfish has become one of the most popular pets in the world, and nowhere more so than in its earliest homes—China and Japan. No Chinese home is complete without a chin-yü, which might be housed in a muddy pond or, at the other extreme, in a carved ivory and gilded aquarium. Every large marketplace

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in Japan has a kingyo stall at which connoisseurs of all ages discourse expertly on the relative merits of each specimen. In the Western world, almost every pet shop sells goldfish. Goldfish in small, glass bowls were at one time popular prizes at funfairs. Now, at American county and agricultural fairs they may be given away in plastic bags. London backdoor hawkers used to exchange goldfish for old clothes. Although these practices have been on the wane since the 1930s, the use of the goldfish for interior decorations remains in favor. For a room furnished in the Oriental style, an aquarium stocked with black-colored Moors is considered an elegant touch. For a modern room, the aquarium may be chromium plated and stocked with an American breed known as the Comet, developed in the 1880s. In the 1930s, society hostesses fashionably substituted a bowl of goldfish for a bowl of flowers on their dining room table.16 The wild goldfish (Carassius auratus, or cfii yu) is native to Chinese freshwaters. It is a greenish or grayish fish, not much esteemed as ornament but sold in markets as food. Red scales appear as a variant, and this striking color has been noted by the Chinese perhaps as early as the fourth century A.D. Even in its natural state the goldfish displays a broad range of variations, a fact that the Chinese took advantage of when they decided to interbreed the abnormal specimens to produce varieties that appealed to their aesthetic sense and even to their appetite for the monstrous. Domestication is known to have begun early in the Sung dynasty (960-1279). By the year 1200, we have firm evidence of the existence of a fancy breed, described as having a snow-white body with black spots, beautiful markings, and a varnishlike luster. By the seventeenth century, the Chinese were breeding goldfish of many different colors in large quantities. In a work written in 1635, the two authors noted in detail the following colors and color combinations: deep red, lustrous white, white with ink spots, red with yellow spots, white with vermilion on the brow, vermilion with white on the spine, vermilion on the spine with seven white spots, white spine with eight red lines, and other banded varieties. The shape of the body and of the fins and such anatomical details as the shape, size, and position of the eyes have undergone major changes during the sixteenth century and later. In the sixteenth century, goldfish with three, five, and even seven tails began to appear. Fish with compact and stunted bodies, known as the Egg Fish, emerged in the same period, as did the Telescope Fish, a variety with large, protuberant eyes (fig. 17). Ideally,

Fig. 17. The Telescope goldfish has been unable to adapt to its grotesquely protuberant eyes and is likely to injure them by swimming against hard objects.

Fig. 18. The Lionhead goldfish has soft excrescences that make the head look like an unripe raspberry or tomato (Tomatenköpf). (Drawings by Wayne Howeli)

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the eyes of the Telescope Fish should be well-rounded, of equal size, and equally protuberant. However, it sometimes happens that only one eye bulges out in the desired manner, or that both bulge out but not equally. The Telescope Fish appears unable to adapt itself to the enlarged eyeballs. As an adult it is likely to injure them by swimming against hard objects and thus become blind.17 Moreover, in a pond the protuberant balls may be sucked out by another fish. Minnows are notorious offenders in this regard. Among the more monstrous of the goldfish breeds is a latecomer, developed in Japan in the nineteenth century, widely known as the Lionhead, but also called the Hooded Goldfish, or the Buffalo-head in the United States and the Tomato-head in Germany (fig. 18). This breed is distinguished by wartlike excrescences that first emerge on the top of the head and then gradually spread downward over the cheeks and gill-covers, leaving only a small area under the mouth comparatively free. The excrescences are soft to the touch, and usually red, pink, or white in color. In the best specimens every excrescence is about the same size, and the fish has been aptly described as having an unripe raspberry for a head. The goldfish is a pet. It has to be fed and cared for. As early as the tenth century, the monk Kao Tsan-ning wrote: "If goldfish eat the refuse of olives or soapy water then they die; if they have poplar bark they do not breed lice."18 These lines provide evidence of the most careful observation and experimentation. It may be that monks who lived in large Buddhist estates with fine gardens have played an important role in breeding fancy goldfish. Emperors, we know, have enjoyed them as pets. Billardon de Sauvigny, in a tract on the goldfish first published in 1780, observes that the emperors make much of the fish and consider feeding them with their own hands among their daily amusements, but that nonetheless "it is the apartments of the women, where they are so much feted and lauded, petted and loved, that have made their fortune and spread them throughout the empire."19 For many centuries the Chinese people, high and low in society, have been able to enjoy the goldfish as pet. To the leisured class, however, it can also be treated as an art object. The fish in its aquarium, set upon a stool, is in its own world—one that does not impinge on ordinary human living space. In this respect, the goldfish differs from hard-to-confine pets, such as the dog, and is more like a potted plant or an inanimate work of art. The goldfish is also like an art object because new varieties can be produced so quickly through skillful human intervention. It occasionally happens that

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a fish fancier is so impatient that he bypasses the process of selective breeding altogether and seeks to impose change directly by dubious devices such as etching Chinese characters on the fish's body with acid or painting flower and other patterns on it.20 Of course, it is fakery to offer such decorated pieces as the products of nature. Note, however, that this criticism cannot be directed at artifice itself, for the process of mating to produce the right breeds is at least as manipulative. Here, for example, is a semitechnical account of how to hand-spawn goldfish. A mature male and female goldfish are placed for from twelve to twenty-four hours in a medium-sized aquarium, with some aquatic plants. As soon as the female has shed a few eggs, thé male is removed and the female taken in hand and allowed to wriggle. Squeezing her is not necessary. The wriggling results in the ejection of a large number of eggs, fully as many as are ejected in the normal way. As soon as all the eggs are shed, the female fish is placed aside, the water given a gentle stir, to distribute the eggs over the plants, and the male taken in the hand. By gently squeezing him in the anal region the sperms are ejected and carried by the same wave to fertilize the eggs. This method almost guarantees all the eggs being fertilized.21 Remember that the procedure, described above in such a dry manner, has no other aim than to produce something appealing and decorative. It is an exercise in fantasy, another attempt to bend nature not so much to human needs as moods. Certainly the names given to the different breeds of goldfish are fanciful. Among those used by Chinese fanciers toward the end of the seventeenth century were: Seven Stars (a reference to the constellation Ursa Major), Eight Diagrams (a reference to divination), Lotus Terrace, Embroidered Coverlet, Eight Melon Seeds, Crane Pearl, Silver Saddle, and Red Dust.22 Goldfish is a special case of domestication, one that enjoys the advantage of being exceptionally well documented in literature and art for a period of one thousand years. The story of the goldfish is, of course, a mere detail in the broad sweep of the history of animal domestication, to which we will now turn. Domestication means domination: the two words have the same root sense of mastery over another being—of bringing it into one's house or domain. With a small animal like the goldfish, domination is not

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a problem. People can always control and play with it. Training is not in question. Although there are stories of how fish have been trained to respond to the call of a single master or mistress, the ability to perform on cue is not essential to its standing as a pet. Because fishes are confined to ponds and aquariums they cannot be a nuisance. The one real challenge, then, lies in altering their shape rather than their behavior. With large land animals, domination must be established if they are to be used or enjoyed. Certain large mammals can be tamed without domestication (where domestication means altering the genetic constitution of a species through selective breeding). Elephants, the largest land mammal, are an example. Although not domesticated, they are easily tameable. They have been trained to do everything from hauling timber to standing on their hind legs, wearing a petticoat, for the amusement of circus spectators.23 Apart from the inherent difficulties of breeding elephants, which have a long gestation period followed by a long period of immaturity, there was no compelling need for humans to alter and control them by such means. With most other large animals, there was such need. Humans have found it necessary to tinker with their biological makeup because, unless this was done, such animals could not be tamed easily and, moreover, remain tame through their adult lives. What were the directions of change? How have humans established their dominance over beasts that in a wild state were too large and fierce to be manageable? One direction of change was toward diminished size. A large animal was reduced to a smaller one—to a pet, the literal meaning of which is "small." Animal domestication began in prehistoric times, more than 10,000 years ago. One criterion by which archaeologists are able to tell whether the skeletons found at a prehistoric settlement belong to a domesticated species is size. How was the reduction effected? Could it have been deliberate? Even when attempts at control and taming were deliberate, the reduced size might have come about by more or less accidental means. At least this is the view of F. E. Zeuner, who thinks that farmers in early Neolithic times lacked the knowledge to bring about a diminishment in the size of large bovines in a calculated manner. Rather, he believes that something like the following sequence of events happened. Contact with humans first occurred when wild bovines, as was their wont, began to rob the fields. The farmers, already experienced with such domesticated species as the dog, the sheep, and the goat, took tentative steps to induct the bovines into the human fold. One step in that

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direction was to capture the young individuals and keep them as pets around camp. Some of these appealing captives were surely treated with kindness, but they could not as a whole have received consistent attention and care. Neolithic farmers, who made only modest demands on themselves for housing and food, were unlikely to provide the best possible living conditions for their captives. Animals thus kept deteriorated in health. Compared with their wild ancestors, their progenies became smaller and weaker and hence also more docile. Throughout the Neolithic period, the size of cattle decreased until, during the Iron Age, specimens were bred that would be considered dwarfs by modern standards. The height of their withers was little more than a meter.24 Manageability or control was the real aim. The smaller size helped. Another device, more direct and perhaps practiced as early as Neolithic times, was castration, which made the male animals more docile. Cutting off the testes of some specimens and not others meant that humans could and did interfere directly with the breeding process. In time, they gained mastery over even the large bovine. Once an animal became fully domesticated and docile, humans could deliberately seek ways to alter it so that it was even more useful and pleasing to them. They might try to make their cattle larger so as to yield more meat or be better draft animals, without however making them at the same time more fierce; and they might try to lengthen and alter the shape of the horns for religious reasons. With the horse, in a later stage of domestication history, humans have tried to make the animal both larger and smaller. Thus we have now at one extreme Shire horses and at the other extreme Shetland ponies. Certain aesthetic criteria probably also applied. In wild horses as well as in asses and zebras the mane is short and stands erect rather than falling gracefully to one side as in all breeds of the domestic horse. Moreover, the domestic horse boasts a longer and more elegant tail. All young animals are docile toward the adults of the species. It suits human purpose, therefore, to breed animals such that they retain juvenile anatomical and behavioral traits through their entire life span. Other than size, the retention of foetal and juvenile traits is used by archaeologists as a criterion for evaluating whether a particular skeleton belongs to a wild or a domesticated animal. Among juvenile traits are a shortening of the jaw and of the facial region. Dogs commonly display these characteristics, but so do other animals—sometimes to an exaggerated degree—as in certain breeds of pig (Middle White, for example) and in cattle such as the South

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American variety known as Niatu.25 With the dog, reduction in the size of the muzzle results in smaller teeth. Not even the Great Dane and the Saint Bernard have teeth as large as those of their wild progenitor, the wolf, even though their body may be larger. Other juvenile traits in the domesticated dog are the short hair, curly tail, skin folds like the dewlap, and the hanging ears of many breeds. Hanging ears give the dog a conspicuously submissive look: think of the spaniel. Police dogs should have erect and pointed ears to avoid even the appearance of submission. Although docility is a desirable feature in a pet, it can become excessive. Fawning can be cloying and friendliness toward humans indiscriminate. Such behavioral traits, Konrad Lprenz believes, is a result of exaggerated infantilism. Dogs of this kind "are always over-playful, and long after their first year of life, when normal dogs have sobered down, they persist in chewing their master's shoes or shaking the curtains to death; above all, they retain a slave-like submission which in other dogs is supplanted after a few months by a healthy self-confidence."26 The impact of domestication on the dog merits a closer look for several reasons. One is that the dog is almost certainly the first animal to have been domesticated. In its long association with humans the dog has become diversified to an extraordinary degree, perhaps more so than any other animal species. Moreover, in the Western world at least, the dog is the pet par excellence. It exhibits uniquely a set of relationships we wish to explore: dominance and affection, love and abuse, cruelty and kindness. The dog calls forth, on the one hand, the best that a human person is capable of—self-sacrificing devotion to a weaker and dependent being, and, on the other hand, the temptation to exercise power in a willful and arbitrary, even perverse, manner. Both traits can exist in the same person. An outstanding fact about the dog, to the naked eye, is its variability. The range in size is so large that it is hard to believe that its members all belong to the same species; and indeed the largest dog cannot breed with the smallest one for obvious physical reasons. A Chihuahua may weigh 4 pounds and a full-grown Saint Bernard 160 pounds, or forty times as much. Legs vary from the squat extremities of dachshunds to the long, graceful limbs of greyhounds and salukis. At opposite extremes we see the undershot jaws and foreshortened heads of bulldogs and pugs, and the long, narrow heads of the borzois. Tails vary from a

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tight curl to a sickle shape. Manifold variations in the color, length, and texture of hair exist and there is even a permanently bald breed, the Mexican hairless, contrasting with the poodle with its continuously growing hair.27 The wild relatives of the dog—the wolf, the coyote, and the jackal— also show wide ranges in size, but their ranges do not match that of the dog. Moreover, none of them exhibit the anatomical contrasts and differences in hair color and length that appear in the domesticated canines. There is not, for example, the equivalent of the dachshund and the borzois among wolves. Skeletons of dogs from Neolithic settlements reveal as yet little differentiation: they all resemble those of the modern Eskimo dog. By 3000 B.C., however, distinct breeds were known in Mesopotamia: one was the heavy mastiff (a guard dog) and the other was the much more slender greyhound or saluki. From the art of ancient Egypt, we gather that several distinct varieties existed; and from the length of time covered by the representations and the consistency of type, we surmise that their distinctiveness was maintained with care.28 In Near Eastern antiquity, already, the dog was treated as an animal whose breeding line could be controlled and modified for human purposes. What were these purposes? What motivated humans to make changes in the breeding line? Foremost among the motivations, from antiquity to the modern period, was use—the use of the dog in hunting and as a guardian of the home. Dogs that helped the hunter were an instrument of survival. On the other hand, in agricultural civilizations hunting was relegated more and more to a subsidiary role in survival while taking on, increasingly, the status and function of a sport, not only among the elite but even—in time—among peasants. Thus, as early as the fourteenth century, farm laborers and servants in England might keep greyhounds and use them in hunting for sport, although no doubt they welcomed the game captured and killed as additions to their pantry.29 Once hunting became a specialized sport, the dog served as an instrument for attaining specific ends, defined by the nature of the sport but serving the larger general purpose of pleasure. Dogs that were at first only instruments of pleasure could later be the direct source of satisfaction whether as a status symbol or as a toy, or both. Nearly all the smaller dogs, which we now think of primarily as pets—playthings for the lap and boudoir—were once bred for hunting. Terriers, for example, derive their

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name from the French terre and were bred to creep into the ground and drive out small animals like foxes and badgers. They were known to English hunters at least as early as the sixteenth century. Spaniels originated in Spain and were used both for hawking and for hunting birds with nets. Richard Blome, writing in 1686, noted how the spaniel could be trained to *'couch and lie close to the ground," then trained to lie still while a bird net was dragged across him, and then taught to associate lying down with the scent of a partridge. Toy breeds existed in the sixteenth century, and these later came to be known as King Charles spaniels. It is hard to see what purpose they served other than as pets. Loyalty was early recognized as one of their most distinctive traits. Thus Blome, in a book devoted to the recreational employment of dogs, nonetheless took space to write: "Spaniels by Nature are very loving, surpassing all other Creatures, for in Heat and Cold, Wet and Dry, Day and Night, they will not forsake their Master. There are many Prodigious Relations, made in several Grave and Credible Authors, of the strange Affections which Dogs have had, as well to their Dead and living Masters; but it is not my business to take notice of them here."30 The poodle is another example. It seems a frivolous and pampered creature that has no conceivable use other than as a plaything and a social symbol. Yet it was bred originally as a hunter. The word poodle comes from the Germanpudeln (to splash in water). It was and is used extensively by the French as a gun dog, and especially for duck hunts. A clipped poodle looks ridiculous. What is called the lion clip (hair shorn from the back and hind parts so that the dog looks like a heavy-maned miniature lion) is more than three hundred years old; and far from being a mere playful fantasy the clipping was done to make it easier for the dog to progress through water. As for the ribbon tied to the hair on the head and on the tail, this too was done originally for a practical end, namely, so that the animal could be seen easily as it moved among the reeds. However, by the reign of Louis XVI (1774-92) the poodle had already become a fashionable pet in France. Poodle barbers practiced a lucrative trade along the banks of the Seine. They ingeniously shaved various patterns on these long-suffering animals, including true lovers' knots and monograms. Thus a topiary art was applied to the hair of an animal.31 One breed of dog that seems to have lost all connection to practical use, if it ever had any, is the Pekinese. It is hard to imagine how this hairy and cuddly dog, which could be as small as four and one-half pounds, might

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have the wolf as a distant ancestor. Yet in anatomy and physiology, in internal and external parasites, the wolf and the Pekinese are remarkably alike. Unique in the Pekinese is its exceptional retention of such babyish traits as a very short facial region of the skull, large brain case, big eyes, short legs, curly tail, and soft fur. Juvenility makes it easy to train the Pekinese into a pet and performer. On the other hand, the animal is reputed to be highly intelligent and independent. This combination of virtues, together with the appeal of its babyish features, accounts for the popularity of the Pekinese among European toy dog fanciers ever since it was introduced from China in the nineteenth century. The story of the Pekinese in China is unclear. Writers on the subject differ widely as to when the breed appeared.32 Miniature dogs were known in China by the first century A.D. They could be fitted under the table, which during the Han dynasty had very short legs. Small dogs were in vogue at court during the T'ang dynasty (618-907). Some of these were probably the Maltese type brought into China from Fu Lin or Byzantium. The prestige of these small hairy dogs, whether they were Maltese or proto-Pekinese, received a boost when they came to be associated with the legend of Buddha's lion. Lamaist Buddhism focused on the lion as a symbol of passion which Buddha was able to subdue; the subdued passion, in the shape of a diminutive lion, trotted by Buddha's heels like a pet. Kublai Khan (1215?-94), as emperor of China, favored Lamaist Buddhism. Lions were a part of his menagerie, and a tame lion or two even roamed his court. About this time the expression "lion dog" came into use. Dog of a certain type served as an emblem of the lion, acquiring its prestige as a mighty beast but also the prestige ofthat beast's association with Buddha. Were the Pekinese, then, a popular pet during the Yuan dynasty? We do not know. We do know that they flourished during the Manchu (Ch'ing) dynasty (1644-1911). Art works dating from the early K'ang~hsi (1662-1722) to the late Tao Kuang period ( 1821-50) clearly depict the Pekinese as well as other breeds of dogs. All Manchu rulers appear to have been partial to the Pekinese. They also favored the idea of the Pekinese as lion dog because of the implied comparison between themselves and Buddha. To Chinese fanciers, the ideal Pekinese should have round cheeks "like dumplings." Their eyes should be large and somewhat protuberant, like those of a goldfish. The front legs were to be short, not straight and sticklike; they were to be shorter than the hind legs, with the intention of

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producing a rolling gait, the movement of a "plentifully finned goldfish."33 Thus the Pekinese was compared not only with the lion but also with the goldfish, that other favored pet among the Chinese. The comparison with goldfish implies the desirability of traits opposite to those of a lion: the Pekinese should be diminutive in size—an animal that one could handle as one would a small toy. Manchu breeders sought to produce specimens of tiny size such that they could be tucked into the sleeves of women's coats. During Tao Kuang emperor's reign, unscrupulous men tried to stunt the growth of the Pekinese through the use of drugs and various manipulative devices. Dowager Empress Tsu-hsi (1834-1908), who took her sobriquet of "Old Buddha" seriously, discouraged these practices while promoting the achievement of the same end through inbreeding. She was not very successful. Knavish fanciers continued to alter the size and shape of the Pekinese by devious means. One method lay in curtailing the exercise a dog should have over the period from the third month to maturity, with the aim of reducing its appetite and food consumption and hence rate of growth. A pup might be put in a closefitting wire cage and kept there until it had reached maturity. Another method lay in holding a pup in the hand for days at a time, inducing by gentle pressure of the fingers a slight exaggeration of width between the shoulders. To achieve the desired result of a small snub nose, some owners broke the cartilage of the nose with their thumbnail or with a chopstick when the pup was from three to seven days old. Others massaged the nose daily in the hope of restraining its growth.34 Imperial patrons and respectable society frowned on all these practices for their cruelty but also because they were illegitimate shortcuts. The approved method was the slow one of selective breeding. In the case of the Pekinese, this procedure had been applied under the patronage of Manchu emperors and the supervision of chief eunuchs over a period of several hundred years. The result was an appealing, healthy, and intelligent animal that was capable of performing all sorts of tricks and of living to the ripe old age of twenty-five years. Dogs, then, can be bred to some arbitrarily constructed standard without doing damage to their health and liveliness. On the other hand, examples can readily be cited of purebred dogs that do suffer from genetic and physiologic deterioration. The basic problem can be stated simply. It is rarely possible to breed a dog to arbitrary criteria of beauty and appeal and still have it retain functional vigor and intelligence. As Konrad Lorenz

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has pointed out, "Circus dogs which can perform complicated tricks demanding great intelligence are very rarely equipped with a pedigree; this is not because the 'poor* artists are unable to pay the price of a well bred dog—for fabulous fees are paid for talented circus dogs—but because it is mental rather than physical qualities that make good performing animals." As one example of rapid degeneration, among many that can be cited, Lorenz mentions the Chow. In the early 1920s, Chows were still natural dogs whose pointed muzzles, obliquely set Mongolian eyes, and pointed, erect ears called to mind their wolf-blooded ancestors. Modern breeding of the Chow, however, has "led to an exaggeration of those points which gives him the appearance of a plump bear: the muzzle is wide and short... the eyes have lost their slant in the compression of the whole face, and the ears have almost disappeared in the overgrown thickness of the coat. Mentally too, these temperamental creatures, which still bore a trace of the wild beast of prey, have become stodgy teddy bears."35 An animal may lose much of its natural vigor and still be serviceable as a pet. It is even desirable that a pet not be endowed with too much vigor and initiative. The pet, if it is to find acceptance in a well-run household, must learn to be immobile—to be as unobtrusive as a piece of furniture. The single most important trick taught a dog is instant obedience to the order "sit" or "lie down." A well-trained dog will lie down for hours at a stretch, upon command, even in a strange place, while its master goes off on business. The ability to stay put is a necessity in a hunting dog and it is clearly a great convenience to humans in a busy, modern household, where time is tightly organized. However, to some people, a dog's submission to command is desirable in itself. Power over another being is demonstrably firm and perversely delicious when it is exercised for no particular purpose and when submission to it goes against the victim's own strong desires and nature. Dog shows cater to the usual human vanity and competitiveness, but they also provide the occasion and the excuse to demonstrate openly and to public applause the power to dominate and humble another being. Here is an account of a dog obedience show which the author offers in all innocence but which may well serve as a prime example of refined cruelty. Perhaps the hardest test required that the dog should be brought into the ring hungry and, when given a plate of his favourite food, sit by it until he was told to eat; the time was four minutes and the owner had to go out of sight, leaving the dog alone with his tempting plate.

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Hundreds of people were watching when, on one occasion, Beeswing [a tiny Pekinese] came into the ring. He was ravenous and the four minutes must have seemed interminable; he endured for two and then, without moving from his post, slowly got up and, in Miss Cynthia's words, "sat on his bottom and begged." The crowd roared but he did not move a muscle. He had not broken the rules but instead of sitting on four legs sat on two; after another two minutes the judge called her; Beeswing saw his mistress come into the ring but knew he still must not move as she walked up and stood beside him. She had to wait for the word from the judge. It came, she released Beeswing who literally jumped on the food and gobbled it.36 In modern society, the owner of a dog may have someone else do the disciplining and training. He enjoys the product—a docile and friendly pet. The harsh story behind the making of a pet is forgotten. And the story must be harsh because the basis of all successful training is the display of an unchallengeable power. The dog must not be in doubt as to who is the master and as to the consequences of disobedience. Another repressed side of the story, so far as a genteel buyer-owner is concerned, are the processes of mating and breeding. These processes are either subsumed under "pedigree," when the past is in question, or steps to be taken under the supervision of specialists, when the progeny or future is in question. Breeding animals to achieve and maintain certain traits calls for an indifference to individual lives that is suggestive of nature's own vast wastefulness. "As soon as the bitch hath littered," explains a seventeenth-century English handbook, "it is requisite to choose them you intend to preserve, and throw away the rest;" and the kennel book of a Yorkshire dogbreeder ( 1691-1720) contains such laconic entries as, "three of this litter given to Br. Thornhill, the rest hanged, because not liked."37 A modern breeder is well aware of the perils of inbreeding, which must nonetheless be carried through to fix a pattern. "Nature uses it extremely," one twentieth-century specialist on the subject says, "but nature is harsh and, if it leads to deterioration, nature has no mercy." The breeder must also show no mercy. He must be scientific and cruel in his play. He "must watch the effect of inbreeding as if through a microscope, and at the very first sign of deleterious effects, not only down must come the guillotine, but the litter that showed them must be destroyed: a step too far has been taken, a step back is necessary."38

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Mating with the aim to produce progeny of a certain kind is, of course, a highly calculative and manipulative process. We have seen how the goldfish might be handled to produce the desired effect. A much larger literature, which reads at times like a laboratory manual and at times like pornography, exists for canines. That compelling desire to intervene decisively in the life of another finds a certain satisfaction in dog breeding. Life's urges and processes are, however, often imprecise; the breeder encounters difficulties that must be overcome. One is the time to mate, which varies with different breeds, within the same breed, and "even between individual bitches bred from the same parents. Dogs, also, vary in their attitude towards in-season bitches. Many will not touch a bitch until the red discharge has ceased. Some will mate a bitch at any time, if the bitch herself will permit it." Often she will not permit it. She has someone else in mind other than the well-groomed mate chosen by the breeder. Waiting for her to relent is useless. Force has to be applied. An expert advises: "Get a good firm grip on her ears. Someone else should then put a hand underneath her to steady her for the dog. With the other hand, a little helpful push at the right moment behind the dog might make all the difference. Steady him whilst he is tying the bitch; then when you are quite sure that the tying has taken place, gently turn him round, back to back with the bitch."39 To ease the process of mating, it may even be necessary to put vaseline on the vagina and take the dog's member "into the palm of one's hand and exert a slight warming pressure." At unscrupulous kennels, where breeding is a profitable business, bitches that do not show willingness are helped, and if they resist the help, they are forced, that is, muzzled and put into a sling to prevent them from resisting.40 The procedures just sketched are the impolite backstage activities. In front, for all to see, are the owners and their pets. How do people relate to the animals they keep in their house? How have attitudes changed in the course of time? Was affection—that personal involvement with the welfare of an individual animal—a common element of the bond? To these large questions I can provide here only suggestive answers. The key question for us, namely, the importance of affection in the bond, is also the most elusive for historical periods. That dogs have been highly valued pets since ancient times is beyond dispute. For example, remains of small

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dogs have been discovered in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, dating back to 2000 B.C. One specimen had ivory bracelets on its legs, and others had collars of twisted leather. The teeth of many of these dogs were in bad condition, which indicates that they suffered from pyorrhea—a consequence of being fed soft food.41 In China, dogs were treasured and pampered by many emperors, notably by Ling Ti (168-90), whose favorites were given official titles; they ate the choicest rice and meat and slept on costly carpets. On both sides of the Eurasian continent, historical records abundantly attest to the importance of the dog in high society. Difficult to ascertain now is the precise character of the relationship between master or mistress and pet. Without doubt, fine breeds served as a symbol of social worth. They were protected and treated with as much care as other precious possessions. However, unlike other possessions, the animal offered entertainment; it could be picked up and played with or used in some way (as a rug or hand warmer, for instance); and it could be put aside anytime, even kicked aside, when one's mood changed. Hints have come down to us that in the past, as in the present, pets served a wide variety of purposes, that they could be a source of pride and yet treated with cruel arbitrariness, that even when human affection toward them was genuine and strong it was more likely to be directed to a type or breed than to particular individuals. Roman ladies were fond of little dogs. Pliny the Elder observed, however, that they also served a practical purpose. "As touching the pretty little dogs that our dainty dames make so much of, called Meltaei in Latin, if they be ever and anon kept close unto the stomach, they ease the pain thereof."42 Alcibiades possessed a large and beautiful dog, noted in particular for its long, feathered tail. It was an animal he could be proud of and which he surely valued, and yet, according to Plutarch, he caused the tail to be cut off so that the Athenians might focus on this eccentricity of behavior rather than on something worse.43 The behavior was eccentric and intended to shock. Still, we may wonder whether an attitude of indifference, interspersed with bursts of effusive attention, was not rather common for his time—and, indeed, of what historical period would this attitude toward animals be untrue? From the Renaissance period onward, portraits of notables often show a dog or two, sometimes prominently placed in the center foreground, along with other precious possessions—rich fabrics, furnishings, and glimpses of landscape and landed property—all drawn vWth attention to

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detail so as to suggest their material substance and tangibility. The dogs in such a world were certainly valued, but did they, individually, capture the affection of their master or mistress? Were they, for example, given personal names? In general, probably not. Thus G. S. Thomson, who studied the household of the fifth earl of Bedford at Woburn Abbey as it existed in the second half of the seventeenth century, has this to say: Many a dog appeared with his master or mistress in the portraits on the walls of the gallery at Woburn. Chiefly, these were spaniels, but one painting at least of the Earl himself, not at Woburn but at Chatsworth, shows a beautiful coursing greyhound standing by his master's side. But to be put into a picture was the only tribute paid to the dogs. No dog in the accounts, whether a spaniel or a coursing hound, is ever mentioned by name, or assumes the individuality of Tomson, the hawk. The entries are always on purely general lines— so many dogs to be fed and looked after.44 Fox hunting became a popular sport among aristocrats and the squirearchy in seventeenth-century England and continued to be so for the next two hundred years. The social flavor of the sport had not a little to do with the hunters' sartorial discrimination and with the presence of fine horses and dogs, which in the eighteenth century might well live in quarters more substantial than those of common laborers or of the servants who took care of them. And yet horses and hounds could also be treated harshly— whipped or kicked—when their masters and mistresses saw fit to do so, in a foul mood or in the heat of a chase. After a day in the field, wrote a riding-master in 1655, it "would pity the heart of him who loveth a horse to see them so bemired, blooded, spurred, lamentably spent, tired out." When worn out they were quickly discarded.45 Wherever animals were kept and brought up around the home compound, genuine affection toward them would develop, if only temporarily and sporadically, if only by the women who nurtured them and by young children who hugged and played with them. In Europe, society as a whole seemed to show a warmer feeling toward domestic animals from the seventeenth century onward. Dutch genre paintings of the period support this view. Whether the paintings are of landscapes or of house interiors, the dog is a common and conspicuous figure. Furthermore, just as the

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people and the interiors shown lack pretension—they are of the bourgeoisie and of low life—so the dogs depicted are not the prized possessions, the emblems of rank and wealth, but well-fed household animals and the mangier specimens of the countryside and the streets. Dogs in a bourgeois household were members of the family, participants in its daily round of activities as well as in its more festive occasions, and valued as such rather than for their pedigree.46 There was sentiment, but of an unselfconscious and practical kind. More effusive sentiment—the hothouse product of a softer city life—emerged later, in the early decades of the nineteenth century. It was then that maudlin dog books began to reach many readers. Joseph Taylor's The General Character of the Dog, first published in 1804, enjoyed enough success to warrant two sequels, Canine Gratitude in 1806 and Four-Footed Friends in 1828. Schoolchildren were besieged by storybooks preaching kindness to animals.47 In the same period appeared the immensely popular animal pictures of Edwin Landseer. Unlike the dogs drawn by such past masters as Paolo Veronese, Titian, and Velasquez, which showed the animals as they were engaged in their own thoughts and business, Landseer's dogs were drenched in human feelings and morality. This highly sentimentalized view of animals was uniquely developed in western Europe and, later, in North America. What were the contributary causes? One general cause was simply the growing distance between people and nature. Wild animals and even farm animals were becoming less and less the common experience of men and women in an increasingly urbanized and industrialized society. It was easy to entertain warm feelings toward animals that seemed to have no other function than as playthings. Moreover, humans needed an outlet for their gestures of affection and this was becoming more difficult to find in modern society as it began to segment and isolate people into their private spheres, to discourage casual physical contact, and to frown upon the enormously satisfying stances of patronage, such as laying one's hand on another's shoulder. To appreciate the depth of the bond between individual humans and their animals, we do well to read the numerous personal stories that have been recorded at different times and places. From antiquity, for example, are the well-known accounts of the devotion of Alexander the Great to his horse Bucephalus. He once risked war with an aggressive mountain tribe, the Mardians, when they abducted his horse. Alexander hand-reared his favorite dog, Peritas. At least one town in central Asia was named after the

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dog; in addition, a monument was built to its honor. With the world at their feet, potentates still seemed to need the blind devotion of animals, and to the animals they in turn might show the utmost concern and affection. Thus Louis XIV, to whom men and women constantly deferred, yet required the company of his setter bitches and always had seven or eight in his rooms. He fed them with his own hands so that they could learn to know him. Thomas Carlyle in his biography of Frederick the Great tells several stories of the king's tender feelings for his dogs. He is reported to have been found "sitting on the ground with a big platter of fried meat, from which he was feeding his dogs. He had a little rod, with which he kept order among them, and shoved the best bits to his favourites." In 1774, "wrapped in solitude, the King shut himself up in Sans Souci with his dogs, and afterwards he asked to be buried under the terrace of this little summer palace at Potsdam among his dogs." As he lay on his deathbed in 1786, he noticed that his greyhound bitch, which lay on a stool by his bed, was shivering. "Throw a quilt over it," he said, and they were probably his last words on earth.48 A tender romance of our time is that between the lonely writer T. H. White and his dog, a red setter named Brownie. The romance started coolly on White's part. He recalled how at first he thought of his pet as simply "the dog," rather as one thinks of "the chair" or "the umbrella." "Setters," he said, "are beautiful to look at. I had a beautiful motor car and sometimes I wore a beautiful top hat. I felt that 'the dog* would suit me nearly as nicely as the hat did." This casual appreciation deepened later into love. Brownie's near fatal sickness and White's nursing the setter back to health triggered the change. When, after eleven years of companionship, the dog did die, White wrote to David Garnett: "I stayed with the grave for a week, so that I could go out twice a day and say, 'Good girl: sleepy girl: go to sleep, Brownie.' It was a saying she understood Then I went to Dublin, against my will, and kept myself as drunk as possible for nine days, and came back feeling more alive than dead," More alive than dead. White, obviously, had to keep on living. Even before burial, when Brownie's body was still by his side, he wondered whether he should buy another dog or not. He pondered in a practical manner: "I might live another 30 years, which would be two dog's lifetimes... and of course they hamper one very much when one loves them so desperately."49 Konrad Lorenz, in his book Man Meets Dog, makes two points that may

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serve as defining the limits of human affection. One is the lingering tendency to treat even a valued pet as a convenience. Lorenz puts it thus: "If I ask a man who has just been boasting of the prowess and other wonderful properties of one of his dogs, I always ask him whether he has still got the animal The answer is all too often... 'No, I had to get rid of him—I moved to another town—or into a smaller house/ " In this regard, it is significant that the mean age of household pets in California is only 4.4 years, with more than half being under 3 years. Household dogs are well looked after and yet they rarely grow old in the human family: they are disposed of long before they reach a ripe old age. The second point that Lorenz raises touches on the individuality of an animal. The death of a faithful dog may cause as much grief as the death of a beloved person. But Lorenz says, there is one essential detail that makes the former event easier to bear: The place which the human friend filled in your life remains for ever empty; that of your dog can be filled with a substitute. Dogs are indeed individuals, personalities in the truest sense of the word and I should be the last to deny this fact, but they are much more like each other than are human beings. ... In those deep instinctive feelings which are responsible for their special relationship with man, dogs resemble each other closely, and if on the death of one's dog one immediately adopts a puppy of the same breed, one will generally find that he refills those spaces in one's heart and one's life which the departure of an old friend has left desolate.50

7 CHILDREN AND WOMEN

When we think of the power that one person exerts over another, the image that first comes to mind is | unlikely to be that of mother and child. For when we think of mother and child we have an image of affection and tenderness—traits that we tend to dissociate from relationships of power. Another barrier to coupling power with motherhood is this. The word person suggests an adult. An infant or even a small child is still not thought of as a person in the fullest sense ofthat word. So, although a mother does have enormous power over her child, it is not quite perceived as power over another fully human individual. The child, in other words, is a pet and is properly treated as such. Whatever views a mother may have toward her infant, in the actual practice of mothering she has to treat it as an incontinent young animal and even as a thing. She picks the infant up and puts it down with confidence and authority. She lifts its legs with one hand and with the other wipes its bottom. To change its diapers, she flips the child over with the nonchalance of a cook tossing a pancake. At a later stage, the child is toilet trained as the pup that is brought to live in the house must be toilet trained. The orders given and the manner in which they are given during such training are practically the same in both cases. The small child is a piece of wild nature that must be subdued and then played with— transformed into cute, cuddly beings or miniature adults as the mother or the surrogate mother sees fit. Its hair is curled, straightened, or tied with ribbons. Its clothes are put on and taken off—it must seem to the small child—at arbitrary times. The clothes themselves appear to have no 115

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bearing to the desires and needs of boy or girl. A child is dressed up largely for the convenience and pleasure of the adult. Once a child is mobile its movements have to be controlled. Inside the home, it is placed in a pen—caged in for its own safety and for the mother's convenience. Outside the home, the toddler may be put on a leash like a puppy. A child has not only to be trained but educated, and there too the mother plays a dominant role at a critical stage of growth. Women have perhaps always recognized this power. In the feminist consciousness of modern times it is openly avowed. "O how solemn, how great the responsibilities of a Mother," wrote Mary Hurlbut, a mother of four in New London, Connecticut, in 1831. Susan Huntington confidently if not arrogantly recorded in 1813 that the mother's task "is to mould the infants character into whatever shape she pleases."1 Attitude toward the child varies, of course, with culture and at different times within the Western tradition. Universally, the mother feels for her child. That is certain. But what is the precise nature of this feeling? To what extent is it consciously cultivated and articulated? The answers to these questions are less clear. One common perception of the small child, shared perhaps by adults in all cultures, is that it is a warm and soft animal pleasant to hold and hug. Jules Henry, reporting on the Kaingáng—a tribe of hunters and gatherers in the highland forests of Brazil—notes that the children there are greatly appreciated by the adults. The source of the attraction is a generic trait—the warmth and softness of their little bodies. Compared with this trait, the unique personalities of the children count for naught. Toddlers are at the beck and call of every adult. They sleep all over the place. They waddle up to older people and there, like pups, absorb the delicious stroking they can always count on receiving.2 In a modern society, children do not waddle about naked in public spaces and they are not at the disposal of every adult. Yet we know how pleasant it is to hold a young child, to cuddle it to our breast. Do we hold a child as a loving, protective gesture, or do we hold on to a child—in moments of unease and self-doubt—as to a security blanket? There is evidence that in premodern times a European mother might take her infant to bed and hug it to herself with fatal consequence to the infant. One common reason given for infant death was "overlaying," or suffocation in bed. It may be that the infant was deliberately killed, but it could also be that it was used as a security blanket and hugged to death. In the Middle Ages, awareness of this possibility lay behind the warning periodically issued to parents

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that they must not coddle their children "like the ivy that certainly kills the tree encircled by it, or the ape that hugs her whelps to death with mere fondness."3 Infants are immobile and can therefore be picked up and put down by adults at any time. This immobility of infants was doubly ensured, in earlier ages, by the common practice of swaddling. Why infants were swaddled has several possible explanations. One is to straighten the child's limbs and to discourage it from assuming the animal-like foetal posture that is natural to it at that age. Another is to prevent the child, believed to be violent and animaUike, from doing harm to itself such as scratching out its own eyes. A third is convenience to adults. A swaddled infant is like an object that can be deposited anywhere. It can even be hung up on the wall or placed behind a furnace, out of one's way. A swaddled infant can also be treated as a toy and tossed about as one would a ball. This treatment of the child is almost too bizarre to be credible, and yet historical records indicate that it could occur, and not only as an isolated incident. It would appear, for example, that a brother of Henri IV of France, while being passed for amusement from one window to another, was dropped and killed. The little Comte de Marie suffered the same fate. "One of the gentlemen-in-waiting and the nurse who was taking care of him amused themselves by tossing him back and forth across the sill of an open window. Sometimes they would pretend not to catch him.... The little Comte de Marie fell and hit a stone step below." In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, doctors complained of parents who broke the bones of their children in what they described as "customary" tossing.4 Young children have been treated as sexual playthings. True of Western culture in the past and possibly in the present, the practice may also have occurred in other cultures. In Western society, sexual customs have changed so much that what we may now view with horror as sexual perversion and abuse was at an earlier time taken rather lightheartedly as a game or as acts legitimized by society. Using children for sexual purposes was a fairly widespread practice in classical antiquity. "Boys were not merely to be bought for money: they could even be hired by contract for a longer or a shorter time. . . . In Greece, at least in Athens and other harbour towns, there were brothels or houses of accommodation, in which boys and youths were to be had alone or with girls for money." Even where sex with freeborn boys was proscribed by law, men kept slave boys for pleasure. Children could be sold into concubinage, and one

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Musonius Rufus wondered whether a boy sold by his father into a life of shame had the right to resist. In gymnasiums, teachers were exposed to the temptation of naked boys under their charge. Plutarch said that freeborn young Roman boys, when they played in the nude, might wear a gold ball around their neck as a warning to men that they were not to be molested. People who went too far in their sexual games with the young were, of course, censured. The emperor Tiberius went too far. Suetonius condemned him because he trained "little boys, whom he called his 'minnows', to chase him while he went swimming and get between his legs to lick and nibble him, and he let babies not yet weaned from their mother's breast suck at him. " On the other hand, adults feeling the "immature little tool" of boys, which Petronius loved to describe, might perhaps come under the category of innocent fun.5 In Europe, as late as the seventeenth century, adults in all layers of society were extraordinarily uninhibited in using ribald language and engaging in overt sexual behavior before children. Indeed, children were often the target of sexual teasing. Their combination of innocence and partial understanding was a source of amusement to adults. The remarkable liberties that adults took with children have been recorded in art, literature, and other documents. One such document is the diary in which Henri IV's physician, Jean Héroard, noted the details of young Louis XIII's life. A modern reader would be shocked by what he finds there. Young Louis was treated as a sort of clever puppy at the disposal of every fun-seeking adult from his nanny upward in status to his royal parents. When Louis XIII was not yet one year old, his nanny made him laugh uncontrollably by waggling his penis with her fingers. The child soon learned to copy this trick. Calling a page, "he shouted 'Hey, there!' and pulling up his robe, showed him his cock." In high spirits, Héroard noted, he would ask the people around him to kiss his penis and nipples. The marquise de Verneuil wanted to put her hands under his coat and play with his nipples, but Louis objected because he was told that she might want to cut them off. Even the queen, his mother, joined in the games. She touched his organ and said, "Son, I am holding your spout." But most surprising of all was the day when both he and his sister were undressed and placed naked in bed with the king, and there they kissed and twittered to the king's great amusement.6 Before the twelfth century, parents no doubt had the most tender feelings toward their young, but these did not reach a level of reflexive

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consciousness to find expression in art and literature. In the Middle Ages, children, once they could stand on their own feet, were viewed as little adults; by the time they attained seven or eight years of age, they were made to work and could be exploited economically as though grown. Already in the thirteenth century, however, signs of a loving interest in childhood as a particular stage in life began to appear. The special needs of children and their unique ways of behavior were noticed more and more in later times. During the seventeenth century this interest was manifest in portraits, which became numerous and rather commonplace in noble households. For the first time, the secular family portraits began to be grouped around the child. A boy or a girl was the focus of pride and value as in other portraits a dog or a monkey might play such a role—or both child and animal would appear as necessary components of a loving household. In many paintings of this period, too, the child occupied a position of honor. Boys and girls were depicted, fondly, as taking music lessons, reading, drawing, playing. Some adults, however, allowed their fondness to take wayward paths. They took pleasure not only in the child's good behavior but also in its antics; indeed they encouraged its capers for their own amusement. They were also inclined to coddle the child and indulge it as they would a pet dog. Madame de Sévignè showed this tendency in her attitude toward her eighteen-month-old granddaughter. In a letter of 1670, the little girl is described as doing "a hundred and one little things—she talks, fondles people, hits them, crosses herself, asks forgiveness, curtsies, kisses your hand, shrugs her shoulders, dances, coaxes, chucks you under the chin: in short, she is altogether lovely. I amuse myself with her for hours at a time." Not everyone was pleased with such foolish fondness. Montaigne, for one, could not accept the idea of loving children "for our amusement, like monkeys," or taking pleasure in their "frolickings, games and infantile nonsense." This critical attitude found wider acceptance in the next century. The moralist Claude Fleury, in a treatise on educational methods ( 1686), railed against the silly habit of praising and kissing children who have said something wrong but cute, or deliberately tricking them into making incorrect inferences for the laughter they provoked. "It is," Fleury wrote in words similar to Montaigne's, "as if the poor children had been made only to amuse adults, like little dogs or little monkeys." This view was repeated in M. d'Argonne's book on education. "Too many parents," he thought, "value their children only in so far as they

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derive pleasure and entertainment from them."7 Both male and female children can, of course, be treated as pets. However, in male-dominated, complex societies young male children are pets in a special sense, and what this is will need to be briefly explored. We hear the expression "mother's boy," "mother's pet." or "mother's little man." There is also the expression "teacher's pet," and in an American elementary school the teacher is likely to be a woman.8 On the one side is the powerful and authoritative woman and on the other is the dependent little boy. In a male-dominated society, children are brought up in a household where the male head is seldom present except as a distant and awesome figure. The details of life are under the control of women. They are the figures of immediate authority with the vast power to give or withhold nurture. Adult males, those that the children see in the house most of the time, tend to have little power and low social status, being servants, slaves, or tutors. The mother is the commanding figure to small children. Her relationship with her daughter tends to be warm and unambivalent. The daughter is herself when young; the little girl's stages of growth replicate her own. For the little girl, growth is also unproblematic. She has her mother as a constant model. A child's playful activities become in time a woman's serious work: there is no sharp break between them. In this type of society, the relationship between mother and son is more complex and tense. The son is of the opposite sex, a fact that the mother cannot ignore even when the son is an infant. Each time she bathes him she is aware of this difference. Each time she teases him, the sexual element—however innocent—is unlikely to be entirely absent. We should not be taken aback, or misinterpret, an engraving of the year 1511 depicting the holy family. The engraving shows Saint Anne pushing the child's thighs open as if she wanted to get at its privy parts and tickle them.9 The picture illustrates the sexual frankness or innocence of the time. But if in a more prudish age the mother deliberately avoids touching those areas of her son, the consciousness of sex is still there—indeed, in a heightened form. The male child is loved because it is a child but also because it is male. Society places a higher value on the boy, a value that the mother shares in part because her own value in society rises by virtue of having produced a son. The son extends her power; he is her security and her gallant champion; he is her "little man." She wants her young son to behave like a little man and to strut a bit. She is amused by shows of

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precocious virility and can tease him cruelly if he reveals girlish traits such as wanting to play with dolls. On the other hand, he is chastised for his boisterousness, for his showing-off and aggression. The mother builds up the son's male ego and then cuts it down, ridiculing it contradictorily for both its crude power and its inadequacy. Why this undercurrent of resentment? Why this temptation to play tauntingly with her son—a temptation that is unlikely to emerge in her relationship with her daughter? One answer lies in the nature of a maledominated society. Women, however outwardly acquiescent, resent their subservient status. A wife resents a husband who spends the best hours of the day in the company of other men and treats her as merely the supervisor of his comforts, the mother of his children, or even more simply with an indifference born of familiarity and fatigue. A woman's anger cannot be directed at her husband and at man's estate in general. It can turn, however, on the son. In Greek myths, as Philip Slater has pointed out, the use of the son as a scapegoat for the father is ferociously and baldly expressed. "Medea kills her son in jealous rage against Jason (Euripides, Medea), while Procne, for identical motives, kills her son and serves him up to his father as a stew ( Apollodorus)."10 This is the strong stuff of passions. For the father's lesser sins, the son may also have to pay. In earlier times and in other cultures, women have stood for awesome power that can be seen as either generative or destructive. Woman is the Great Mother, the source of all life and a nurturing goddess. She is also the Terrible Mother and takes the form of monsters in such places as Etruria, Rome, Egypt, India, Bali, and Mexico. The Great Mother is the ever fertile earth, the Terrible Mother is the ever hungry earth that devours her own children and fattens on their corpses.11 In many societies, women as bearers of children and nurturers of plant life occupy a focal position in the structure of authority. " Whether the male chief is big or small," say the women of a West African solidarity group, "what matters is that he was given birth by a woman." Such women can protest a chief's action by treating him like a child.12 They rely on ridicule and shame to get their way. No man can completely forget his former total dependence on a woman. In patriarchal societies, the men can never quite free themselves from the subliminal fear that they may yet slip back unawares into a childlike state and become once more women's appendages and playthings. As women's irresistible wiles seem endlessly varied, so are the forms of male subservience. Rousseau pretended to be concerned that the

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men of his time were so bound up with pleasing women, so careless of their own need for mental stimulation and physical exercise, and so incapable of defending themselves against the vacillating moods of nature that they were turning into a breed of lapdogs. In a poem called "On Woman," he describes her as that seductive and deadly being that "makes man into a slave, makes fun of him when he complains, overpowers him when he fears her, punishes him, and raises storms that torment the human race/'13 Woman, both as nature and as culture, threatens man. As nature, she is a mysterious and violent force that needs to be propitiated or controlled. She is also fertility, nature's overwhelming abundance, and the threat to man there is the temptation of ease—of renouncing strife and culture for an indolent life on nature's ample lap.14 As culture and artifice, woman represents a force that threatens to domesticate the male, emasculating him and curbing his freedom and wildness. To overcome his fears, man seeks the postures of domination and condescension. Insofar as woman is a force of nature, she must be tamed and harnessed to man's needs and desires. However, nature is not only powerful it is also unconscious, crude, irrational, and amoral. These are the defects of innocence—the innocence of nature and of the child. Woman in this other guise of nature is like a child. She can be condescended to and treated as a child. Woman, like nature and the child, is dumb—that is, without articulate speech. She is taught to be silent in the presence of her men. Speech does not become her, for it is either the prattling of a child or it is blunt and therefore ill-suited to the needs of public discourse.15 Significantly, in Japan, flower arrangement is an art perfected by man, which is then taught to woman so that she can, without speech, express her sentiments to her lord. On the other hand, the human male has also recognized woman as culture and the mistress of culture, including articulate and refined speech. Man's response to this perception is to treat culture as frivolity— the essentially useless trinkets and baubles of life—and to regard speech itself as evidence of ineffectiveness; woman speaks because she lacks the strength to act, that is, move material objects in the world. It would appear that man feels inferior, which feeling he tries to overcome by assigning to woman such subsidiary and subservient roles as vehicle for the continuation of his line, child, maidservant, fragile ornament, source of sexual pleasure and health, and plaything. All over the world, it is true, the general tendency has been far more to exploit women economically, to

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use them as laborers at uncongenial tasks, than to regard them as objects of prestige, playthings, and pets. But it is with the latter that we are concerned here. When we think of women as playthings and pets, one image is certain to emerge and that is what goes on within the women's quarters, the seraglios and harems of patriarchal societies. Popular notion has it that these are paradises for the powerful and lascivious men who own them, that their denizens—the women—have no rights and serve no purpose other than as objects of prestige and of sexual indulgence. Reality is, of course, far more complex. Rules of etiquette and duty bind the masters almost as much as they do the women, and in some ways they can be as onerous. Yet in the end we must conclude that the women segregated in their compounds, almost totally out of touch with the outside world, exist for the use and pleasure of men. Consider traditional China, where for more than two millennia men of the middle class and above have practiced polygamy. As early as the middle Chou period (ca. 700 to 500 B.C.), the king was believed to need the services and company of one queen, three consorts, nine wives of the second rank, twenty-seven wives of the third rank, and eighty-one concubines. (The numbers, after one, are multiples of three—three being a magical number of potency.) Why did the king need so many women? In cosmologie and medical terms the answer is that the king, because of the high level of his vital force (Ce), required a large number of female partners to sustain it through sexual intercourse. Success in producing a strong and intelligent male heir for the throne was assured if union with the queen was preceded by a strengthening of the king's vital force through frequent copulation with women of the lower ranks.16 Such belief was not confined to the ruler; it percolated down the heirarchy and was passed down the ages. By the Han period, custom allowed a middle-class householder to have three or four women, a man of the upper middle class six to twelve women, and a nobleman, a great general, or prince thirty or more wives and concubines. Justifying sexual indulgence as a health measure and as answering the social need to produce a vigorous male heir was understandably popular with the men. However, moralists periodically raised objections, increasingly so during the Sung dynasty. Thus Wan Mou (1151-1213), wrote: The princes and noblemen of today keep large numbers of consorts

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and concubines, they use them as a kind of medicine— But this will not prove advantageous to them; on the contrary, it will soon ruin their health. Even a superior man who understood [the Confucianist] Reason like [the famous Pang scholar] Han Yü could not avoid succumbing to those teachings. So difficult it is to control one's carnal desires. Thus countless members of the gentry harm their body and lose their life through "those with the powdered faces and painted eyebrows," but they still persist in these practices and will not see reason.17 Where did the women come from and how were they obtained? No sure answer can be given for the more distant historical periods, not even for the large contingents assembled for the imperial palaces. However, reasonable surmises can be made. Van Gulik believes that during the heyday of empire (T'ang dynasty) the palace women "consisted of girls offered as tribute, both by the provinces and foreign and vassal countries; of daughters of prominent families keen on obtaining the Imperial favour; and of women recruited by palace agents. The palace agents used to scour the entire Empire for beautiful and accomplished women, and apparently took them wherever they found them, not despising even commercial or government brothels."18 Thus, like rare birds or plants, women were picked and sent as gifts and tributes to the palace, where they were sorted out as to quality: the best went into the harem, the talented were trained to become performers, and the least desirable found employment as servants. During the sixteenth century, the procedure for obtaining palace women was somewhat different. Selection took place among the general population around Peking. "Young girls," wrote the modern scholar Ray Huang, "were nominated by the precinct and village elders according to quotas assigned to the communities, and subsequently went through many rounds of screening" before they entered the palace gate. Sometimes as many as three hundred were admitted as a group into the imperial household. Once inside the palace compound, the women would not see the outside world again and indeed would not see other males again except the emperor and the eunuchs.19 The Chinese emperor, in theory the absolute ruler of men, in fact led a life that was tightly circumscribed by tradition and customs which the civil officials (zealous Confucians) supervised. One area of the emperor's life that the civil officials could not touch was the women's quarters. The

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women were the emperor's property. Among them and within the inner courts he was free to behave as he wished. He could and sometimes did bathe naked with his ladies in the palace ponds. Dallying thus, the emperor was vulnerable to murderous attack. To forestall this possibility, all doors giving access to the inner apartments were kept barred and guarded. Security measures also necessitated another practice, attested for the Ming and Ch'ing periods but probably dating back to much earlier times. It was this. To guard against the possible but unlikely event of a woman attacking her imperial lover, the woman designated to share the emperor's couch was stripped naked, wrapped in a quilt, and carried into the emperor's room on the back of a eunuch.20 To Westerners, the single word that best captures the social life just sketched for China is harem, a word of Arabic origin with the meanings of "protected," "inviolate," and "sacred." Harem is the place in which women are confined, inviolate to the outside world but, of course, open to use by the master of the house. Before the triumph of Islam, Arab women enjoyed considerable freedom; following its triumph they tended to be increasingly segregated. As a social and political institution, the harem gained real importance and power under the sultans of Turkey, beginning in the fifteenth century. The harem developed into a complex world of its own in the Grand Seraglio of Istanbul. During the reign of Sulayman the Magnificent (1494-1566), it contained three hundred women, a number that rose to twelve hundred in the time of his grand* son.21 The harem, as a whole, was an austere rather than a luxurious place for most of its inhabitants. Every member had her exact duties to perform and belonged to an oda (court), each with its specialized function such as coffee-making, dressmaking, and accountancy. A woman might spend her entire life perfecting a skill, rising slowly but steadily in the hierarchy. Her moment of glory would come—if it ever did come—when for some reason she caught the sultan's eye. From that time on, she was "marked," separated from the rest of the girls and given an apartment and slaves to herself. Should the sultan actually express a desire to have the lucky girl in his bed, an elaborate fuss was made over her—preparing her as though she were a culinary delight. The heads of the different departments were called in to assist. First to take charge of her was the keeper of baths, who supervised her toilet with massage, shampooing, perfuming, and hair dressing. The shaving of the body, dyeing of the nails, and other such details followed. The girl then proceeded to the keeper of the lingerie, the

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mistress of the robes, the head of the treasury; and so on until she was at last ready for the royal bed.22 Should the fruit of the union be a male child, the girl was elevated to the status of kadin (concubine), with the possibility of one day becoming the valideh sultan, or queen mother, the highest and most powerful position that any woman could hope to reach. On the other hand, should she fail to produce a male child and should the ardor of the sultan wane, she would be stripped of appurtenances and privileges and returned to her former status as a worker in the harem. Although it would be inappropriate to characterize the harem as a workshop, yet most of the women there were occupied in acquiring some skill, which helped to pass the time, provide an avenue of achievement, and could lead to a satisfying and respected position of training others. Nevertheless, a woman's greatest aspiration and constant hope (up to a certain age) was to be able to crawl humbly into the bed of her lord.23 Humiliation plumbs a poignant depth when its victim regards it as the highest form of honor. Accounts of the enclosed women's quarters in the Moslem world, in South and East Asia, all have an air of the fabulous, however responsibly told. They seem like tales out of the Arabian Nights. We know that in the Western world women have also been segregated, but it has been difficult for us to connect them in any serious way with the foot-bound women of premodern China, with the girls behind the purdah and in the harem. Yet the link can be and has been made, notably by Eleanor Perényi, who asks us to ponder over the innocent and appealing images of "flower and garden."24 Are these images and things so innocent? In the Western world as elsewhere, flower connotes beauty, but also a certain useless passivity and frivolity. Du bist wie eine Blume. You are like a flower. The "you," of course, is a woman and the comparison is meant to flatter her. A man, thus compared, would feel insulted. In the harem of the Grand Seraglio, castrated black boys were given the names of flowers such as Hyacinth, Narcissus, Rose, and Carnation. In China, that bundle of crushed flesh and splintered bones—the bound foot—was compared to the lotus. In Europe, "shy as a violet" and "clinging vine" were once intended to be commendatory. It was proper for a woman to be shy and clinging. The enclosed garden is lovely, but if its inmates have no right to leave it at will, it serves in reality as a prison. The word paradise, as we all know, is derived from a Persian word for the garden. The walled-in compound is indeed a paradise for the master of the house: all its contents—flowers,

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shrubs, and fountains, exotic animals and lovely women—cater to his pleasure. The master of the house alone enters and leaves as he pleases; none of the other inmates enjoys such freedom. Flowers figure in varying degrees of prominence in alLthe inner spaces designed to accommodate primarily women, whether we think of the inner courts of the Chinese house, those of India where the purdah is strictly enforced, or the Moslem harem. In the Western world, too, the symbolism of femininity and masculinity is clear. On the one side might be the Roman atrium or some flower-filled enclosure chiefly for women, and on the other were the far more expansive pleasure grounds such as those laid out by Pliny, which he designated as for himself and his male friends. Except for violet beds he did not mention flowers and he did not mention women. In Renaissance and post-Renaissance times, the female realm was the hedged-in giardino segreto; beyond it stretched the vast, rather austere formal spaces—almost flowerless—designed by men in large part to reflect their own sense of grandeur and power. Women in their sheltered and flower-strewn spaces could lead a life of comfort and even luxury. Within their own realm they might exercise undisputed authority. Given their ability to maneuver their men, the women could also exert influence over the public realm far beyond the walls within which they were sequestered. In the European Middle Ages, the noble ladies—those whom we see embroidering or playing a zither among the flowers in tapestries and illuminations—could boast a great deal more. To judge from the troubadour poetry of the period, they were able to inspire absolute allegiance from their men. Their wish, however whimsical, was obeyed; their rebukes, however unjust, were silently received. Emerging in southern France during the eleventh century was the cult of courtly love, in which the lover pledged his service to his lady as would a vassal to his lord. The lover was the lady's "man." He addressed her as rmdons, which has the meaning of "my lord" rather than "my lady." But who was the lover? Who were the men who lived for the favor of their ladies? They were not the lord of the castle: he would have viewed the lady and her damsels as his property. They were rather the male contingents of a feudal domain, "the inferior nobles, the landless knights, the squires, and the pages—haughty creatures enough in relation to the peasantry beyond the walls, but feudally inferior to the lady as to her lord—her 'men' as feudal language had it."25 In the hard and comfort-scarce world of the castle—hard and raw in part because of the surplus of unattached

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males—almost all the touches of grace, beauty, good manners, and the good life flowed from the lady and her damsels. Most of the men within the castle could not aspire to marriage with these women; what they could hope for was illicit love and the few graces that emanated from the female presence. The chatelaine could indeed dominate her male social inferiors. But what was her relationship with her lord? Significantly, while the mass folly of the Crusades occupied the men for some two hundred years the chatelaine in effect took control of the absentee lord's estate and managed it well for him. She assumed a position of power and of responsibility. Nevertheless, as Perényi puts it, "she lived behind fortified walls, and it isn't hard to conjecture that her garden was in the nature of a chastity belt, locking her in until the return of her lord and master. "26 We have looked at woman in the harem and woman in the garden and castle. Let us turn now to a third image, much closer to our time, and that is woman in a "doll's house." This last image, although it was beginning to emerge in the eighteenth century, came into sharper focus later, in the midst of the socioeconomic transformations and moral hypocrisies of the Victorian Age. The flower garden is a part ofthat image: we can see in our mind's eye the lady of the house wearing a large sun hat and garden gloves clipping flowers for her table. But other pictures, as vivid or more vivid, come to mind. There is the house itself, which, from the mid nineteenth century onward, took on romantic and even playful airs—a fictitious example being old Mr. Wemmick's castellated house, described by Dickens in Great Expectations, with its moat, its drawbridge, and its gun salutes at sunset.27 Within the house are maids dusting the furniture and the extraordinary clutter of bibelots; the lady at her various little jobs, writing a letter, thinking what should go on the menu of Saturday's dinner, reading a novel, putting some touches on a watercolor, puttering around the flower garden (as we have seen), or playing with the children. It is a curiously cloistered world of women and small children throughout the day—a curiously dreamlike world in which so many of the activities seem more play or domestic ritual than necessity, including even the recurrent dusting and polishing of so many useless objects. "Home, sweet home." "There is no place like home." These were still fresh sentiments at the start of the nineteenth century. At about this time too home was commonly viewed as "retreat," "haven," or "retirement." Home was a fortress—old Wemmick's castellated house—set against a hostile world of strangers, meaning by that the crowded and industrialized

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city. Home was also a sanctuary—a pure and inviolate world for women and children (harem, we remember, means "sacred" or "inviolate")—set against the male, commercial world of competition and strife. How did the propertied men, the fathers and husbands, see their womenfolk? Whether daughter or wife, a woman was a ministering angel, a salve to the men returning from the battlefield of economic life. She was, of course, always a child to the father. To the husband, she was the "child-wife." Custom dictated that the husband be several years older than the wife: from the vantage point of maturer years and greater experience alone he could look down upon her. Before suffrage, the wife in fact had the legal status of a minor. In New England, in 1835, "a married woman had no legal existence apart from her husband's: she could not sue, contract, or even execute a will on her own; her person, estate, and wages became her husband's when she took his name."28 The child-wife was playful. She prattled on entertainingly and dispelled the clouds that gathered around her husband's brows in the course of a workday. She had accomplishments to her credit: she could sing, do watercolors, and speak a little French. She knew enough to help educate her young children and preside graciously at the dining table, but not so much that her knowledge threatened her "sweetness." She was pure. Her thoughts were always loving, but curiously she was also amoral like a child. She did not fully appreciate the impersonal majesty of the law or the concept of honor; she obeyed rather the "laws of the heart." If pure and childlike, how could a woman also be the object of sexual desire? The sexual nature of woman was carefully hidden during daytime. When she left the house to go shopping or visiting, she went as it were in purdah— under a large hat, behind a veil, and wearing a dress that covered almost every part of her body. Yet in the evening, at a formal dinner or ball, she could appear in a provocative gown that emphasized her breasts and revealed her shoulder and arms.29 Under certain conditions, then, the men could bring out their women and show them to be not just virtuous mothers and wives but also glittering possessions, adornments, and tantalizing sex objects. What is sketched here is valid for only a narrow layer of society—the affluent bourgeoisie, people with enough money to have several live-in servants. In less prosperous households, the women would have to busy themselves to maintain their homes in a proper state of social respectability. In New England, leisure was even more scarce. Middle-class women

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there were engaged in such domestic manufactures as spinning, weaving, and candle-making until well into the second half of the nineteenth century. Obviously they could not play at being child-wife. As for the aristocracy in England and on the Continent, their women had traditionally enjoyed greater freedom of movement and of manners than had their sisters of the upper bourgeoisie, who were constrained by more stringent notions of morality and domestic virtue. A classic statement of the upper-middle-class woman as a man's childwife and pet is Ibsen's play A Doll's House, published in 1879.30 We can use Ibsen's words and ideas to recapture the essence of what it means for a woman to be dominated, indeed humiliated, under the guise of affection. Standing out at the start of the first act are the differences in the way husband and wife address each other. Whereas the wife simply uses her husband's given name, Torvald, the husband calls his wife his "little lark" who twitters charmingly, his "little squirrel" busy at her nonessential tasks, and his "little sweet-tooth" who must be rebuked for secretly eating macaroons when she had promised him not to. Nora, the wife, plays so excitedly with her three young children that there seems hardly any difference in age between them. Motherhood for her is reduced to such romping in the living room and to buying presents at Christmas time, since the more serious tasks of nurturing and training the children are taken over by the nurse. Nora does possess one special talent: she can dance. She has learned the tarantella while she and her husband were in Capri. It is the wish of the husband that she dress up as a Neapolitan peasant girl and dance the tarantella at a neighbor's party. She is to be shown off; a very proper wife she is, but also a doll—a dancing doll. The plot of the play centers on Nora's attempt to save the health of her husband by sending him to a resort with money that neither of them had. She borrows the money by forging her father's signature on a document. When her deed is exposed, her husband—far from understanding her motivation of love—denounces her hypocritically for her crime, for her inability to appreciate the impersonal honor of contractual agreement and the letter of the law. Nora at last realizes that she has been living for eight years not with a husband but with a stranger in a doll's house. Torvald: Haven't you been happy here? Nora: No, never, I thought I was, but I wasn't really. Torvald: Not—not happy!

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Nora: No; only merry. You've always been so kind to me. But our home has never been anything but a play-room. I've been your doll-wife, just as at home I was Papa's doll-child. And the children in turn have been my dolls. I thought it was fun when you played games with me, just as they thought it fun when I played games with them. And that's been our marriage, Torvald.31 Nora's words capture the theme of this chapter.

8 SLA VES, DWARFS, FOOLS

Domination of one group over another is inescapable in any large and complex society. The degree of domination varies, as does the sharpness of the distinctions drawn between the groups: witness the terms masters and slaves (or servants), lords and peasants (or serfs), Brahmans and Untouchables, upper class and under class. Where humans have won indisputable power over nature, their use and exploitation of animals and plants no longer calls for an explanatory myth. Inequality between adults and children, because it is a temporary condition, has never required defense. Man's exercise of power over woman does call for an explanatory myth, and the one that man has traditionally used is an appeal to biology. What happens when one group dominates another without the excuse of either age or gender? Other myths emerge to make inequality acceptable, even right, to both parties. Perhaps the most unusual and most effective of these myths is the ethical-religious explanation for the caste system of India, a system that has been maintained without major disturbance for some two thousand and three hundred years. Caste is based on birth. The institution of caste suggests that whole groups share genetic inheritances so markedly different from each other that such groups ought to hold quite different positions in society. Thus stated, the view is clearly racist, but the statement misrepresents the Hindu view. The Hindu's frame of thought does not include genetic inheritance. What an outcaste or Untouchable inherits are not genes but the misdeeds of a past life. It is legitimate to look down on an Untouchable and to assign unpleasant tasks to him because of 132

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these misdeeds. On the other hand, caste status is transmitted down lines of biological descent, and the distinctions of caste are often recognized on grounds of physical appearance. In general, members of the lower castes are darker skinned that those of higher status. So racism and racial prejudice may indeed be a significant component of Indian caste consciousness, even though the formal justification for the system rests on a religious belief that emphasizes cycles of rebirth and the transmission of merits and demerits from previous lives. The Indian rationale for caste is unique to India. Elsewhere it is far more common to use differences in physical appearance and in mental capacities believed to be associated with them as justification for domination and subservience.1 Skin color is a highly visible physical trait that has often been used to separate people into distinct social layers with vast differences in power. Light and dark, or white and black, form polarities. Worldwide there is a strong tendency to attribute positive values to "white" and negative ones to "black." In Europe, particularly from the sixteenth century onward, this tendency developed into a fully articulated set of antithetical values: white and black connoted, respectively, purity and filth, virginity and sin, virtue and baseness, beauty and ugliness, beneficence and evil, God and the devil. Europeans were learning more and more about Africans from the distorted accounts of travelers and slave traders and from seeing black servants and slaves in Europe. White skin, in itself, became a mark of superiority. Interestingly, this stress was preeminent in England, where Elizabeth was queen. Elizabeth herself deliberately fostered "pale looks" as an image of beauty. When entering the capital on one occasion, "her litter was uncovered that she might shew herself to the people, clothed all in white, her face sickly pale." In the middle of her struggle with Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth felt it sufficiently important to ask one of Mary's courtiers who was the fairer of the two.2 The association of dark skin with animality or childishness is a familiar one in Western culture. The dark-skinned person, as someone barely human, is to be harnessed to toil; or, if young and comely, to be treated as an exotic pet. The dark-skinned person, as a perpetual child, is to be fed and clothed, disciplined and trained to perform menial tasks suited to his mental capacity. This well-known theme will be further explored later, but a proper perspective requires us to know that this setting up of superiority and inferiority, of domination and subordination, based on

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physical appearance and skin color is far from being an aberration of Western culture alone. Other civilizations and cultures share it, in varying degrees. Consider, as an illustration, the social hierarchy of Ruanda, a central African kingdom, as it pertained in the hundred years or so before the middle of the twentieth century. Three distinctive groups live in Ruanda: Twa, Hutu, and Tutsi. The Twa are a pygmoid people, huntergatherers who were probably the country's earliest inhabitants. The Hutu are of middle stature and are hoe-cultivators who appeared in Ruanda at about the same time as the Twa or somewhat later. The Tutsi are very slender and tall, of light brown skin color, and are herders of cattle. In Ruanda's hierarchical order, the Tutsi form an aristocracy, the Hutu are commoners, and the Twa are said, "half jokingly, by most of the other Ruanda, to be more akin to monkeys than to human beings." Added to these physical differences, objectively present but greatly exaggerated by the habit of stereotyping, are differences in moral quality as perceived by the Ruanda peoples themselves: the Tutsi are intelligent, capable of command, refined, and cruel; the Hutu are hardworking, physically strong, not very clever, extrovert, unsophisticated in manners, and obedient; the Twa, in direct antithesis to the Tutsi, are gluttonous and lazy, but they are also said to be courageous in hunting and loyal to their Tutsi masters. All three groups believe that the differences are innate rather than the result of upbringing and culture. As the top crust of society the Tutsi lead a lordly and leisurely life. When they travel, for instance, they may do so in litters carried by their Hutu and Twa subordinates. In return for labor and personal service, the Tutsi offer patronage and protection. However, it is up to the Tutsi to decide how much protection to grant. A Tutsi lord may decide to take care of the whole of the subordinate's life, treating him as a child, or he may offer only limited patronage. The subordinate, on his part, must assume a posture of inferiority and be totally compliant to the will of his lord, his only way out of this bondage being to exchange one master for another.3 Differences in physical appearance make it easy for society to justify orders of unequal power and prestige, but they are not by any means necessary. Humans are seldom at a loss to find innate inferiority in the people they wish to dominate. A characteristic of slavery in classical antiquity is the lack of racial distinctiveness in the enslaved class. Nevertheless, Aristotle was prepared to argue that some humans were slaves by nature. The very fact that they allowed themselves to belong to another

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stigmatized them. Like domestic animals, natural slaves were deficient in reason; they needed to be controlled by others and to serve others with their bodies. Indeed nature endowed them with strong bodies, in comparison with those of free men, so that they could perform the hard and necessitous tasks,4 In the modern period, we have the example of the ease with which the English were able to treat the Irish poor as an inferior race—dirty, lazy, and irresponsible, though capable of being trained into competent servants—despite the absence of distinguishing physical marks. Of course, upper-class Europeans, including Englishmen, have habitually looked down upon their own working poor—the "lower orders" in their midst. German nobles in the eighteenth century considered themselves so far above lower-class Germans that they could not envisage equality even in heaven.5 Because of large differences in nourishment and other living conditions, striking differences in physical appearance between rich and poor did eventually emerge. The undernourished poor in Europe were not only shorter in stature but also darker skinned, pigmented by dirt and exposure to the sun. These traits, caused by the injustices of society, could then be taken by the well-fed and well-housed as the predictable outcome of an inferior nature.6 Why dominate another? By far the most common reason is use. Any complex society has a large number of tedious or hard and even dangerous jobs that must be performed if society is to be maintained. Through a combination of force and indoctrination, a segment of society is made to do the unpleasant work. The people thus compelled, whatever their legal status, are treated as tools. Care is given them because tools must be kept in good order. Cato the Elder (234-149 B,C.)> in his advice to his son on how to manage a farm, refers to sick slaves as unproductive and a useless burden. Plutarch speaks of Cato as someone who "never once bought a slave for more than 1,500 drachmae, since he didn't want beautiful ones, but hard workers; and he also thought that when these got older, they should be disposed of and not fed when they were no longer useful."7 Within the house, a Greek or Roman owner found it hard to conceive how a decent human life was possible without constant, unobtrusive attendance by slaves. In a comedy, a Greek playwright tried to envisage a world without slaves. He pretended that such a world was possible only if things could move upon command. "Each object will come to him when he calls for it. Put yourself down next to me, table. That one—get yourself ready. Fill up, jug."8

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Slaves were a part of a house's furnishings and belonged to it as did the roof, bath, and well. No self-respecting man wants to live in a house that is not fully equipped. Human appliances, however, need not have the legal status of chattels; they could be servants. Consider an upper-class Victorian household. It was filled with servants who maintained the house and catered to the innumerable demands of the family; and yet, as furnishings and appliances they were ideally invisible. Servants were segregated from the family. They had their own work areas and living quarters, connected to each other by backstairs. Should the mistress of the house encounter by chance a gardener at work, he was to dispose of himself as quickly as possible; and should she come upon a maid dusting the furniture the maid was to press herself against the wall in an effort to fade into the woodwork. Slaves and servants were exploited primarily for their brawn, more rarely for their special skills and for their good looks. Cato, we have seen, was not concerned with the aesthetic appeal of his slaves, only with their ability to perform tasks. Yet Cato, by declaring his lack of interest in beauty, suggests that other buyers were concerned with it. Pederastically inclined men could buy attractive boys for immoral purposes. Both Greeks and Romans probably purchased attractive slave women with an eye to sexual congress and to using them as prostitutes.9 Slaves were also bought for their intellectual endowment. Thus Romans purchased educated Greek slaves as guardians and tutors to their children. In comparison with the practices of classical antiquity, slavery in the modern (that is, post-1500) period was concerned almost exclusively with the needs of labor. In America, posters announcing slave sales emphasized the slaves' age, health, and strength, and in the case of women, perhaps also their "prolific generating qualities," as one Southern newspaper put it. And yet there can be little doubt that, other things being equal, a comely slave fetched a higher price than a plain one. Slave traders knew this and would do everything they could to improve the appearance of their ware. Like a dishonest car dealer who sets back the odometers of his cars, a planter selling his slaves might pluck out the gray hair of the older ones or paint them over with a blacking brush. Old marks of abuse were covered up with grease, and grease might also be used on slave bodies to make them shine. Some sellers presented their goods in fancy wrappings, fitting the females in silks and satins and the males in neatly pressed suits. Before a buyer sealed his purchase of a slave in the Old South, "he usually wanted

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to examine him physically. He looked at his teeth, limbs, and back, felt and poked muscles. Often buyers touched female slaves in most familiar ways." Sometimes the slaves were carried back into a small yard, where they were stripped and minutely inspected for hidden scars, signs of syphilis, and in the case of women the pelvic areas to estimate their potential as childbearers. In the carnival atmosphere of auction day, with liquor flowing freely, we can easily imagine the crude jokes, the sexual taunting and humiliation of the humans on sale.10 Let us focus on the noneconomic aspects of slave ownership. As chattels of value, costly to purchase and maintain, slaves added prestige to their owners. A traveling potentate in the past had to be accompanied by a long retinue of slaves and servants and perhaps exotic animals as well in order to make the appropriate impressions on his hosts and on the populace. Hellenist kings like Antiochus IV sought to overawe their subjects by organizing processions involving hundreds if not thousands of slaves; and it was a sign of extreme indignity for an exiled monarch like Ptolemy VI to arrive at Rome accompanied by just four slaves.11 In rich, slave-owning societies, bondsmen and women formed a part of the dowry of the bride. It is recorded in the Later Han Dynasty, for instance, that for the wedding of a daughter of the Yuan family in Lo-yang the dowry of the bride included one hundred silk-clad girls.12 In slave-owning societies, farm slaves were purchased for the work they must do to make an operation economical and profitable. Household slaves in the city, on the other hand, were often multiplied far beyond the number necessary for efficiency and convenience. Just as a modern house-owner might buy a superfluity of mechanical goods in unthinking extravagance and for prestige, so in an ancient household the master might have so many slaves that he could not possibly remember all their names and functions and so was obliged to make one servitor the nomenclátor, whose duty was to be a memory bank.13 Because of the very large number of servitors (Tacitus mentions four hundred for a Roman urban household), their duties tended to be highly specific. In addition to the many jobs that had to be done around the house, there were others whose existence catered to the master's sense of propriety, dignity, and luxury, as, for example, those of cupbearer, entertainers in general, and in particular the educated slave assigned to read aloud while the master and his guests dined. Slaves who performed the necessary tasks soon became invisible, but slaves who served luxury needs and prestige retained the

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visibility of all prized objects. They were likely to win the owner's pride and capricious affection. We can imagine, for instance, a Roman aristocrat taking special pride in the melodious voice of his reader, accepting modestly the compliments paid to his slave as a modern host might accept the compliments paid to his stereo that played soothing music during dinner. Comely and talented slaves were luxury goods but because they were also human they could be thoroughly pampered or sexually abused as pets. Although Petronius in The Satyricon exaggerated intentionally for effect, he nevertheless caught the flavor of decadence in an obscenely wealthy household in Nero's Rome, in which pretty slaves—pretty bibelots as it were—were fondled and ravished or dispatched to a friend as a gift, as their owner's mood dictated.14 Remote in time and place from Imperial Rome is Czarist Russia. Yet in the organization of household life among the powerful and in the ways the masters regarded and treated their servitors, there are some remarkable similarities* By the last quarter of the eighteenth century the Russian serf was scarcely distinguishable from a chattel slave. Serfs at that time could be sold "like cattle." When Catherine II, under the beneficent influence of her mentor Voltaire, tried to ban the spectacle of auctioning humans on the block and failed, she permitted such sales but forbad the use of the hammer by the auctioneer!15 Russian nobles, by the standard of their peers in other European countries, were extravagant in the number of domestics they retained. Some of the great establishments in St. Petersburg had as many as 150 to 200 menials. One British visitor, who had access to a selection of the greatest houses of St. Petersburg and Moscow in the years 1805 to 1807, found them "filled with vassals, or servants, both male and female, who line the halls, passages, and entrances of the rooms in splendid liveries. In almost every antechamber some of these domestics are placed, ready to obey the commands of their lord or his guest." A Russian nobleman took special pride in those serfs who possessed unusual skills. They swelled his own sense of importance. Thus, when a guest complimented him "on the pastries served at his table and surmised that they came from the most fashionable patisserie in town, he could casually answer that they had been made by his own serf confectioner." A Russian lord might have his own orchestra. Piotr Kropotkin noted how proud his father Prince Alexander was of his orchestra, even though it was not of high quality because most members were part-time players serving also other needs of the household. However, the prince

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did buy two violinists whose sole job was to play the violin.16 Although some serfs were prized possessions, this standing did not guarantee them against abuse. Just as a potentate might in anger or as a gesture of disdain sweep an entire set of costly glassware crashing to the floor, so he might impose capricious punishments on his serfs, and the females among them were liable to be the victims of his lechery. Great nobles and landowners in Victorian England, although they did not have serfs, did have servants in extravagant number. These, besides performing useful functions, were also symbols of luxury and prestige. Lower servants were a part of a great house's hidden machinery; upper servants—particularly footmen—were objects of display, chosen for their height and good looks. The lords of England had the pick of the human stock, those over six feet tall, while the little fellows sank "into pot-boys, grooms, stable men, and attendants at the inns.*'17 In the best households, footmen were matched in height. A pair might stand erect behind their mistress's swaying coach, splendidly liveried and often wearing padded silk stockings to make their legs look more curvaceous (fig. 19). They were trained to act in unison, marching in stately steps up "to the great doors of a London house and banging on the double knockers in perfect harmony, before they marched back again to their lady waiting in her coach." When eight members of the Kropotkin family dined, twelve men waited on them, with one man standing behind each person at the table. English eccentrics more than matched this particular example of excess. Thus William Beckford (1760-1844) was known to have ordered a magnificent dinner for twelve guests, with a dozen footmen in attendance, only to dine alone. The eighth earl of Bridgewater was famed for his extraordinary parties in his Parisian mansion. He too had his table set for twelve, with footmen in attendance, but his guests were his favorite dogs.18 His human menials in rich livery were made to serve his animal pets, also lavishly attired. From the exalted position of the earl, servants and favorite dogs had much the same rank and he was free to play with both. A pet is a diminished being, whether in the figurative or in the literal sense. It serves not so much the essential needs as the vanity and pleasure of its possessor. Under this broad definition, the ornamental slaves, serfs, and servants that once cluttered up the houses of the great were pets. But there is also a narrower meaning to that word. A pet is a personal belonging, an animal with charm that one can take delight in, play with, or

Fig. 19. A Punch cartoon showing a dignified Victorian footman having difficulty with his leg stuffings.

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set aside, as one wishes. Humans can become such pets too.To illustrate, consider the role of black domestics in England from the sixteenth to the early part of the nineteenth centuries. Their status was ambiguous. Not legally chattels, they were however often treated as such. Servants they were, like other nonblack colleagues in the household, but also pets—the personal favorites and appendages of their masters or mistresses. As early as 1569 Lord Derby employed a black servant. From about that time onward, slave-domestics from Africa figured more and more prominently in noble households. Their initial attraction lay in their exoticism and rarity. Renaissance man's curiosity toward all things fabulous and rare extended to the African, human and yet so unlike himself. Blacks lived in Elizabeth's London in sufficient number to be a source of worry to the queen: she was concerned with feeding the growing immigrant population at a time when food was scarce and famine periodically threatened. And yet the queen herself employed Africans at court: one was known to be an entertainer, and another a page. James I made the employment of Africans a fashion. He had his own troupe of black minstrels while his wife, Anne of Denmark, used black servants. In the years after the Restoration blacks were a common sight on the streets of London. By 1680 they were so much a part of London life and society that it was alleged of the lady of fashion that "she hath always two necessary implements about her; a Blackamoor and a little dog."19 The treatment of African domestics as curios, accoutrements, and pets is well documented in the eighteenth century. A fine-limbed boy would make a nice present for the wife of one's boss. One of Admiral Richard Boscawen's subordinates brought back a Negro boy from America as a present for the admiral's wife. Blacks were openly offered for sale in shops, warehouses, and coffeehouses. Metropolitan and provincial newspapers regularly announced their availability. One such notice, for instance, sought to dispose of " A Pretty little Negro Boy, about nine Years old, and well limb'd." London was widely known for the size of its market for black slave-domestics. Thus in 1769, when the czarina of Russia wanted a "number of the finest best made black boys," her agent came to shop in London.20 Young black boys occupied a special position as exotic ornaments and pets. They were the favorite attendants of noble ladies and rich courtesans, and in that capacity gained entry into drawing rooms, bedchambers, and theater boxes and enjoyed an intimacy with their mistresses that

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could not be countenanced for other male servants. As they did with their pet dogs and monkeys, the ladies grew genuinely fond of their black boys. Attempts were made to educate them—in part, to test the quality of African intelligence; and when for some reason they proved inconvenient to keep, sustained efforts were made to place them with other caring mistresses. The position of blacks in society was also suggested by the art of the time. In the same manner that favorite dogs appeared in contemporary paintings, so did favorite African domestics. Thus the heroine in Hogarth's The Harlot's Progress is attended by a black boy, and a black boy appears in the series of six pictures called Marriage a la Mode. Other examples are Kneller's Duchess of Ormonde, Zoffany's The Family of Sir William Young, and George Morland's The Fruits of Early Industry. Sir Joshua Reynolds, using his own black as a model, painted Negro servants into a number of his portraits: he took delight, it would seem, in the contrasting colors and textures of the human skin.21 This practice was by no means confined to England. Van Dyck's portrait of Henrietta of Lorraine, painted in 1634, shows her attended by an exotically dressed, plump-faced black boy. And F. O. Shyllon notes that "in Richard Strauss's comic opera Der Rosenkavalier, set in Vienna in the early years of the reign of Maria Theresa, who was proclaimed Archduchess of Austria in 1740, the Marschallin had a black boy as a pet."22 From the start, young African domestics in noble households were fancily attired. By the eighteenth century, the ornate livery had come to be an insignia of black, as distinct from white, servitude (fig. 20). Far more telling of the true status of the domestics, however, were the collars and padlocks that the black members were sometimes made to wear. This inhuman fad was common enough to draw the attention of enterprising craftsmen. A goldsmith, for example, announced in The London Advertiser for 1756 that he could make "silver padlocks for Blacks or Dogs; collars, etc/' A black boy, being a prized possession, might wear a gold- or silver-plated collar with the owner's coat of arms and cipher engraved on it. Or the boy's collar might bear some such inscription as, "My Lady Bromfield's black, in Lincoln's Inn Fields."23 Prejudice against blacks took a wide range of forms, some more crude than others. At its crudest, blacks were regarded as stupid, indolent, and subhuman. Less harsh but more insidious was the habit of praising blacks as "faithful and obedient." And they might also be characterized as childish or childlike, always happy and grinning, drawn naturally to fancy

Fig. 20. Attributed to Johann Zoffany, Portrait of the Third Duke of Richmond out Shooting with his Servant c. 1765. Paul Mellon Collection, Upperville, Virginia. The servant wears the distinctive redand-black livery of the Duke's black servants.

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and farce. One talent commonly attributed to Africans, and intended ostensibly as a compliment, was an aptitude for music. Already in the seventeenth century and continuing through the eighteenth, a myth built up to the effect that Africans could sing and dance. Some argued for a cultural origin of this bent, others held it to be inborn. A major contributing factor to the myth was the black minstrel show. We have noted that James I had his black entertainers. But it was in Victorian England that the minstrel show, performed by whites as well as blacks, became widely popular across all layers of society. In time the picture of a grinning, dancing, and singing person, absurdly dressed in tall hat and cotton garments of brilliant hue, was indelibly associated in the English mind with the black man. Toys made in the likeness of this image were sold throughout the country, thus affecting the way children perceived. Given this stereotype, it was difficult to take any black man seriously. He came to be regarded as the quintessential entertainer, someone who existed to amuse his betters. Thus even where real talent existed it could be turned into another cause for condescension.24 A supercilious attitude, widespread even among highly educated Victorians, was forcefully expressed by Thomas Carlyle, who, after fulminating over the condition of the West Indies following emancipation, continued: "Do I then hate the Negro? No; except when the soul is killed out of him. I decidedly like poor Quashee; and find him a pretty kind of man. With a pennyworth of oil, you can make a handsome glossy thing of Quashee, when the soul is not killed in him! A swift, supple fellow; a merry-hearted, grinning, dancing, singing, affectionate kind of creature, with a great deal of melody and amenability in his composition."25 Pets offer amusement by their physical appearance, their endearing tricks and minor talents. In Europe, young African domestics were cute playthings for their mistresses, and blacks in general had come to be seen as entertainers. Let us turn briefly to China, where human pets certainly existed but they belonged to the same race as their owners. In China, it would have been most improper for a great lady to have male menials as pets. No doubt powerful and dissolute women had kept them in their private chambers, but such behavior received social opprobrium. It was common, however, for the ladies of the house to treat the numerous young female servants that swarmed over the estate as pets and playthings. Maids, girls in their teens and younger, were employed in large numbers to cater to the comfort and needs of young masters and mistresses. Their

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duties were light. Free time was plentiful, and being young and somewhat pampered, they occasionally got themselves into trouble. Punishment could be swift and severe, including whipping. On the other hand, because they were not only servants but also pets they might be let off lightly. "These girls are here for our amusement," explained one lady of the house to another in the great eighteenth-century novel The Story of the Stone. They are like pets. You can talk to them and play with them if you feel like it, or if you don't, you can simply ignore them. It's the same when they are naughty. Just as, when your puppy-dog bites you or your kitten scratches you, you can either ignore it or have it punished, so with these girls. If they do something to offend you, you can either let it pass, or, if you don't feel able to, you can call in one of the stewardesses and have them punished. There is absolutely no need to go rushing off in person, shouting and hollering at them. It's so undignified.26 Pets can be doted on, but also teased and humiliated in all sorts of ways. We will now examine some of these ways as they applied to human slaves and servants. What we shall see are not instances of physical abuse but of disdain—a sadism in which pleasure is procured by diminishing another. Those who indulge in this form of sadism may not recognize the trait in themselves; it can be mild enough to be overlooked, to seem altogether natural and even right. Consider first the question of names. Human dignity requires that a person possess an appropriate name, and that he or she be addressed in a respectful manner. In ancient Rome, a master could call his slave by anything he liked. In the earlier stages of slave-owning, he was accustomed to call his human chattel by his own name, plus the suffix por (puer—"boy"): for example, Marcipor or Lucipor. Later, practical exigency required that a much wider range of names be used. The label "boy" has always been resented by the adult servitor. "What is more hateful than to be called to a drinking party with 'Boy, boy'—and that by some adolescent who hasn't grown a beard yet" complained a house slave in a Greek drama of the fourth century B.c.27 The arrogant masters of the world have evidently found this simple verbal device to humiliate the weak a useful one, for it has retained currency through the millennia right to our time.

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Giving slaves absurd names was clearly a playful way of showing contempt. In the colonies as well as in the mother country, blacks, dispossessed of power and education, were tacked with such resounding classical names as Pompey (perhaps the most popular of all), Socrates, Cato, and Scipio; or they might be called Starling, Tallow, Little Ephraim, Robin John, and Othello. When a clergyman visited a Mississippi plantation to baptize forty slave children, he could barely keep his countenance as he administered the sacrament to Alexander the Great, General Jackson, Walter Scott, Napoleon, Queen Victoria, Lady Jane Grey, Madame de Staël, among others. It transpired that the names originated in the "merry brain" of the planter's sister. All the white visitors at the ceremony were vastly amused.28 Slaves were not alone in being robbed of their individuality and personality in this way. In Victorian England, domestics were often addressed by names that were not their own. The best known of these is probably James, which came to be attached to the first footman. A maidservant who happened to be baptized Julia might be asked to change it into something more appropriate to her station such as Martha. In a large, traditional Chinese household, it was common practice for young servants raised there to be addressed by such fanciful pet names as (for girls) Aroma, Butterfly, Cicada, Emerald, Lotus, Felicity, and Sunset; and (for boys) Happy, Joker, Cheerful, Lively, and Rich.29 These are words for animals and things and for qualities that are pleasant and desirable but not grand or noble in animals and things. A young mistress could have a real butterfly for a pet; "Butterfly" also happened to be how she called her personal maid. A young master, taught to be a serious scholar, could smile in condescension at his pages named Happy, Cheerful, and Lively. To tease and humiliate another person, call him Boy or Alexander the Great, that is, either by a diminutive name or by one so grand as to be manifestly absurd given that person's chances in life. Likewise, dress a slave either in tatters or in fine livery. Planters of the Old American South seemed to be of two minds as to how their human chattels were to be clothed. Considerations of economy argued for minimal cover, a step favored moreover by the view that blacks were physical beings, near the state of nature. Field hands wore garments so torn from use that they offered little protection from either inclement weather or appraising eyes. Slaves who worked in the field were known to run and hide their seminudity when they saw visitors coming. House slaves, by comparison,

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wore decent garments. In a grand country estate or in a townhouse they might even be lavishly attired. On the other hand, in some good homes it was apparently not unusual for slave boys, some of them fully mature physically, to wait upon dinner tables wearing only a shirt not always long enough to conceal their private parts. Visitors observed that both master and mistress appeared to take such seminudity in their midst for granted. Socially, they could pretend to do so, fully accepting the fact that the proper attire of a houseboy was the minimal smock. Subconsciously and perhaps even consciously they must have been aware of their servitor's state of undress; it was, after all, an important part of white people's myth that blacks were heavily sexed.30 Slaves were frequently exposed to ridicule. Here are a few illustrations. A field slave could be asked to help out in the big house from time to time. His clumsiness might provide a source of merriment not only to the mistress but also to house menials, far better dressed and far more knowledgeable in the proprieties of civilized life. Some punishments were ingeniously designed to force the victim to feel his own complete helplessness and inferiority. "A Maryland tobacco grower," Kenneth Stampp writes, * 'forced a hand to eat the worms he failed to pick off the tobacco leaves. A Mississippian gave a runaway a wretched time by requiring him to sit at the table and eat his evening meal with the white family. A Louisiana planter humiliated disobedient male-hands by giving them 'woman's work' such as washing clothes, by dressing them in women's clothing, and by exhibiting them on a scaffold wearing a red flannel cap."31 Anyone who claims to be an individual must have some control over his or her space and time; moreover, this control must be recognized as a right by others. The biological needs of a pet animal are recognized. A dog, for instance, should be fed at fairly regular intervals and must be allowed space in which to exercise. However, apart from these allowances that derive directly from biological exigency the pet animal has no right to space and time of its own. The slave, whether viewed as a workhorse or as a household convenience or as a pet, is placed in a similar position. He has no space of his own. On a plantation of the Old South, slaves could not close their quarters and their cabins to visitation by their white masters and mistresses. People from the big house enjoyed visiting the quarters. It provided them with the pleasures of slumming. It made them feel superior and even kind. "We went into the Quarters and had lots of fun in Uncle

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Bob's cabin." So people from the big house might effuse after such an excursion. Some house slaves had no privacy at all. At any time of the day or night, services could be demanded of them. They slept in the same room as their master and mistress, normally on the floor like a guard dog, sometimes on a bed of their own, and sometimes in the same bed as the master or the mistress when the couple occupied separate rooms. These personal attendants were usually youngsters, but they could be sexually mature teenagers and older.32 Slaves had no control over time. For field slaves the working hours might be no longer than those of their overseers or of small white farmers, but slaves had no say in the pace and schedule of work. A good master gave his hands breaks to rest or go swimming, but he could not give them the sense of controlling their own time and labor. House slaves were even worse off. Field-workers could at least return to their cabins after sunset and play with their children or putter about in their small vegetable patch, but house menials had no recognized "after hours." Slaves in the house had better access to better food but there was no set time when they could eat undisturbed. They had to snatch at food at those times when they were free to do so. They were made to feel that they were always at the disposal of others. A small but constant source of humiliation for house slaves was that they always had to stand—to assume that posture of disposability— in the presence of whites.33 Where one person has great power over another its exercise tends to be capricious, harsh on many occasions, indulgent on a few, and sometimes teasing. Treatment of slave children is a case in point. On a Maryland farm where Frederick Douglass was a child, at mealtime, the "corn-meal mush was placed in a large wooden tray and set down, either on the floor of the kitchen, or out of doors on the ground; and the children were called ... and like so many pigs would come, and literally devour the mush—some with oyster shells, some with pieces of shingles, and none with spoons."34 In vivid contrast, at a North Carolina plantation, it was the rule that every Sunday morning all the children were to be bathed, dressed, and their hair combed, and taken to the big house for breakfast, where they were doted upon by master and mistress. In general, slave-owners treated the children with indulgence as though they were cute animals. Even masters with a reputation for severity seemed to take delight in their "pickaninnies" and "little niggers," liked to spoil them with little gifts, and permitted them liberties of speech and action denied to their own children.35 An adult

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slave might also acquire the ambiguous status of a pet and be allowed to behave in an outrageous manner. For example, ''in Charleston a visitor went for a drive with a mistress who asked her coachman to take them down a certain street. But the coachman ignored all her pleas and took them a different way. The guest of a Georgia planter told of another coachman who suddenly stopped the carriage and reported that he had lost one of his white gloves and must go back to find it. 'As time pressed, the master in despair took off his own gloves and gave them to him. When our charioteer had deliberately put them on, we started again/"36 One type of evidence frequently cited to show how a planter in the antebellum South was capable of genuine kindness toward his slaves was the enormous care he and his wife might bestow on their social events, such as weddings and balls. There could have been genuine consideration, a sincere desire on the part of master and mistress to give pleasure. On the other hand, they themselves derived pleasure, and according to Kenneth Stampp, not all that pleasure was of a wholly innocent kind. "The white family," writes Stampp, "found it a pure delight to watch a bride and groom move awkwardly through the wedding ceremony, to hear a solemn preacher mispronounce and misuse polysyllabic words, or to witness the incredible maneuvers and gyrations of a 'shakedown." 37 A planter might give his slaves a holiday for no other reason than that they should dance and have a barbecue, and thus provide a spectacle for a group of visiting white children. Slave performances were never considered high art, or even art, but amusements such as those that could be seen done by acrobats and performing animals in carnivals and circuses. The rulers of this world have exploited their human subjects in all manner of ways, but, in contrast to the treatment imposed on pet plants and animals, they have on the whole refrained from the enormity of trying to breed humans systematically for specialized purposes. It is true that some potentates or their minions have tried to emasculate helpless people so as to make them suitable for the performance of certain services, including that of entertainment, but, fortunately, such practices have been rare. An important exception is the castration of the human male, a custom known in widely different parts of the world. Cutting off the testicles of large and powerful animals has been a technique of domestication since protohistoric times. Castration of humans was a form of punishment known since antiquity, along with other

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forms of dismemberment, such as the cutting off of hands and feet and, ultimately, decapitation. Was dismemberment considered primarily a retribution or was it also a method of controlling unruly persons? It served both purposes. In the New World, slaves who ran away or otherwise showed signs of excessive spirit might be castrated. Planters who ordered this punishment and who were in the habit of regarding their slaves as livestock no doubt compared it to the step they naturally took to tame their bulls and stallions. Until well into the eighteenth century, castration persisted as a way of punishing and subduing refractory slaves, although by then it tended to be confined to punishment for one crime— that of raping white women. And here we are reminded again of the centuries-old white man's fear and envy of black man's potency. This potency, which white mythology took to be a special attribute of the black race, was to be curbed unless, of course, it served white man's purpose by producing more slaves.38 Punishment and control were not the only reasons for castration. Another was religion. A boy or man might submit to the knife in order to qualify for service to a Mother Goddess or God. The basic idea seemed to be this. An individual, by depriving himself of potency, could devote his whole being to the source of all potency. In the secular sphere, this source was the despot. Where despotism was combined with polygamy, eunuchs emerged as a necessary mechanism of the social structure. Deprived of their manhood, eunuchs could enter the intimate household of the despot and become the guardians of his women. Eunuchs lacked not only sexual potency but also political power—other than that which flowed directly from the despot. But because eunuchs enjoyed this direct access to the source of all power, some of them were able to acquire great power and wealth for themselves. From the despot's viewpoint, the chief appeal of the eunuchs lay in their loyalty and their usefulness. Loyalty was absolute because the welfare of these "de-natured" men depended absolutely on the favor of their master and because eunuchs, their power and wealth notwithstanding, tended to be despised by normal men and women. Usefulness was enhanced, not diminished, by castration, not only for the special purpose of guarding the harem but also for affairs of state because of the single-mindedness with which eunuchs could do their master's bidding. The Persians provided us with the earliest historical record of castration: it was done on prisoners for the purpose of employing them to guard

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the harem. Other uses were also recognized. Cyrus the Great, according to Xenophon, appreciated eunuchs for their fidelity and for the skills they could dedicatedly acquire. Unlike many men, Cyrus did not see eunuchs as weaklings. He drew this conclusion from the case of other animals: for instance, vicious horses, when gelded, stop prancing about, but are none the less fit for service in war; and bulls, when castrated, lose somewhat of their high spirit and unruliness but are not deprived of their strength or capacity for work. . . . Similarly, men become gentler when deprived of this desire, but not less careful ofthat which is entrusted to them; they are not made any less efficient horsemen, or any less skilful lancers, or less ambitious men. On the contrary, they showed both in times of war and in hunting that they still preserved in their souls a spirit of rivalry; and of their fidelity they gave the best proof upon the fall of their masters, for no one ever performed acts of greater fidelity in his master's misfortunes than eunuchs do. . . . Recognizing these facts, he selected eunuchs for every post of personal service to him, from the door-keepers up.39 Eunuchs flourished in the Ottoman and Chinese empires. Biologically impotent, some of them were able to compensate by acquiring wealth and political influence. In the Ottoman Empire, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the number of black eunuchs employed to guard the harem of the Grand Seraglio rose to eight hundred. A service of this size had to be organized into a bureaucracy. As is characteristic of bureaucracies, most of the jobs there were humble and routine such as that of guarding the gates. However, when young, all the neutered males enjoyed a period of favored treatment. They were given a handsome allowance and robes of the finest silk. As adults, they lived in the knowledge that some, at least, could catch the eye of the sultan and rise to the top of the harem hierarchy. One of them would eventually attain the rank of the kislar agha, a position of enormous power. Intelligence and knowledge were qualifications for the post, and yet the black eunuch occupying it might be an ignorant and crude fellow with no skills other than those of intrigue and ingratiation.40 In China, eunuchs probably served in feudal courts as early as the late Chou period (ca. 500-300 B.C.). Throughout Chinese imperial history, they played an important role in the manipulation of power around the

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throne. This role was more prominent in some periods than in others but at no time more notable and pervasive than during the later part of the Ming dynasty. In the 1580s, for instance, close to 20,000 of them were employed, in ranks varying from that on a par with top bureaucrats down to messengers and household attendants. Castrated boys, presented to the emperor by their ambitious parents, attended the Inner Palace School at an age of no older than ten and were taught there by the best scholars of the Han-lin Academy. The exalted positions that some of them would eventually occupy were thus earned, although "it was not impossible for an illiterate eunuch who had won the emperor's favor to break into this inner circle by becoming the Director of Ceremonies. " The most senior and talented of the eunuchs were given special privileges and marks of esteem. Some of them, for example, enjoyed the right to wear jackets with designs authorized by the emperor himself and could even be carried about in a sedan chair, which was the pinnacle of honor when it occurred within the palace. Nevertheless, eunuchs, in distinction to their coworkers the scholar-officials, were creatures of the emperor and had no independent base of power and virtue in the idealized Confucian view of the world. The few who managed to achieve wealth and power were thus obliged to confine their ostentation to the palace. "Their work remained anonymous; they would forever be unsung heroes within the governmental structure.1'41 One more reason for castrating the human male remains to be noted, and that is to produce singers. As water was made to jump, as plants were twisted and dogs bred and clipped for aesthetic ends, so where boys castrated. One of the more grotesque ironies of history was the role of the Church in the emasculation of children. Church choirs called for singers with high voices. Boys supplied the demand, but inadequately: just when they had learned their art their voices were starting to break. Falsettists might be used as a substitute, but their voices had an unpleasant quality and could not, in any case, reach the high soprano range. Women, endowed by nature to fulfill the role, were nonetheless forbidden to sing in church on no less an authority than Saint Paul. Supplying good voices became a more urgent problem from the middle of the fifteenth century onward. The increasing popularity of thecappella style, elaborate and calling for a higher degree of virtuosity than anything that had gone before, made the efforts of the choirboys and falsettists manifestly inadequate. The services of the castrati were in rising demand.

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Ambitious but poor parents, with boys who showed even the least musical talent, sought to meet it. During the peak period of the castrato's art, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, castrated boys went to colleges of music for long years of training alongside their unoperated peers. The young castrad were considered delicate and were given better food and warmer rooms than the others. They were also dressed in distinctive costumes. Nevertheless, their life in the college must have been exceptionally difficult. No doubt they were teased mercilessly by fellow students. Some ran away, a step that the other students apparently never took. In the adult world, the successful castrati received wealth and adulation, but an underlying contempt for their kind was indicated by the Church's rule prohibiting them to marry, even when they ardently desired it. The secular opera attained immense popularity in eighteenth-century Italy; likewise the castrati who had exceptional talent, especially if vocal virtuosity was combined with youth and good looks. Such a person was Farinelli (1705-82). His career was a triumph from beginning to end. He sang in the major cities of Italy, in Vienna and London, and everywhere he was showered by acclaim and handsome fees. He died in old age, with honor and dignity. There was, however, a famous episode in his life that illustrates the ambivalent status of a castrato, no matter how favored. This was when he gave up acclaim in the opera houses to enter the private service of Philip V of Spain. The king at that time suffered from profound and incurable melancholia. It transpired that one of the few things in this world that could provide him with a measure of relief was the miraculous voice of Farinelli. And so, over a number of years, Farinelli was paid a royal sum for one duty, namely, to sing four songs every night before the king. He was the royal songbird, a personal entertainer to one mortal, a humbling position for any human person to occupy. On the other hand, Farinelli's talent was real and commanded ungrudging admiration. Moreover, he possessed a generous character which enabled him to rise above the sordid jealousies that afflicted his profession. Finally, Farinelli was exceptional among the castrati in being nobly born, a fact which no doubt helped to shield him against the taunting of his colleagues, especially in the early training periods of his career,42 Human pets are people whom their self-designated superiors regard as powerless, not fully human, and in some ways entertainingly peculiar. We

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have seen that children, women, certain household slaves and servants, and castrated males qualified for this status. We now turn to another class of human pets—dwarfs and fools. Concerning dwarfs, the first question we might raise is a horrifying one, namely, were they deliberately created? Throughout history, humans have tried to control nature by reducing its scale. Wilderness miniaturized becomes bonsai. Large animals have been made smaller in the initial processes of domestication; largish canines have been turned into lapdogs. Were there attempts to stunt human growth or breed small people for their aesthetic and entertainment value? The answer would seem to be yes. For example, in the Greek language there is the word gloottokoma, which refers to the chests used to lock up little children with the aim of opening up for them a lucrative career as dwarfs. In his essay On the Subiime, Longinus (ca. first century A.D.) mentions the practice of keeping people in cages so as to impede their growth. Romans who sank to the depth of disfiguring children to make them into more pathetic and effective beggars would not have abjured techniques of stunting them so that as dwarfs they could seek careers in entertainment. One technique the Romans used was dietary deprivation. Depriving children of "lime-salts" would cause rickets, the Romans thought.43 Did the ancients try to breed dwarfs? Probably. We do know that the princes of the Italian Renaissance made such attempts, but the results often failed to conform to their wishes: the offspring of dwarfs need not be dwarfs at all. The earliest record of a person of subnormal stature employed because he could "divert the court and rejoice the heart of the King" dates back to Fifth Dynasty Egypt (ca. 2500 B.C.). A pygmy in the service of Pharaoh Dadkeri'Assi had been purchased in Puanit, a country to the south of Egypt described by Egyptians as "ten leagues beyond man's life" and inhabited by ghosts and talking serpents. No doubt a part of the pygmy's value to the pharaoh and his court lay in the aura of mystery associated with his land of origin. To judge by the evidence of the tombstones, pharaohs other than Assi also loved to surround themselves with dwarfs who, acting the buffoon, provided entertainment, although a few of them might have been given responsible office such as superintendent of the royal linen.44 The custom of keeping dwarfs and fools as entertainers and pets is ancient and recurrent. It appears in some civilizations but not in others, in some periods of history but not in others. Dwarfs and fools abounded in

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the court of the Ptolemies but played little role in the life of the Greeks. In the Roman Empire, jaded men of wealth kept half-wits and deformed slaves in their houses, not so much out of compassion as for the distraction and amusement they could provide. To give pleasure to aristocratic Roman ladies, dwarfs ran about naked or were decked in jewels. Clement of Alexandria reports that delicately reared young ladies liked to play with deformed jesters at their table. Martial paints an even more bizarre picture of the uses to which they could be put. "Labulla has discovered how to kiss her lover in the presence of her husband. She gives repeated kisses to her dwarf-fool (Morio); this creature slobbered with many kisses, the lover at once pounces upon, fills him up with his own kisses, and hands him back to the smiling lady."45 Dwarfs figured prominently in the consciousness of princely and aristocratic Europe for some two hundred years, roughly from 1500 to 1700 (fig. 21). The flippant manner with which they could be treated is indicated by the following incidents, which all suggest that somehow stunted people were delicious and amusing—part of the fare that might be offered at a feast. In 1580, Lucrezia Borgia gave a banquet at which two dwarfs, Ledardino and Francatripp, were served up with the fruit to amuse the ladies. Jeffery Hudson, a handsome midget and a favorite of Charles I and his queen, Henrietta Maria, was once sent to the queen hidden in the crust of a huge pie. Packing people into pies was still deemed clever entertainment in the backward courts of eighteenth-century Russia: on one occasion two such pies were delivered to a banquet table, and out of them emerged a male and a female dwarf, who then danced a minuet.46 Slave pets, we have seen, were sometimes given absurdly inappropriate names; likewise dwarf-fools. Those at Renaissance courts were often addressed as King. Queen Elizabeth had an Italian jester whom she called Monarch, explaining in a teasing manner that he was such a great lord that he had no need of land. Philip IV named Christobal da Pernia "Barbarossa," after the pirate king. In Mantua, a dwarf was called "the firstborn" (primogenitus), and he presumed the right to address Federigo Gonzaga, heir to the throne, as his younger brother. At the Milanese court, the quarters for dwarfs and jesters were known as the "Giants' House." Lodovico il Moro called one dwarf "il Signore"—U signare being Sultan Mohamet II, a fact known to everyone. During the seventeenth century, a remarkable number of distinguished

Fig. 21. Dwarfs in the court of Cosimo Medici; engraved by Jan van Straet, after 1575.

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artists—including Rubens, Velasquez, and Van Dyck—painted dwarfs alongside either a dog or a monkey (fig. 22)« Dwarfs, dogs, and monkeys were all a part of the menagerie of a noble lord or lady. Dogs were valued pets at this time, as we have seen, but not quite in the sentimental manner of the Victorian period. As for monkeys, their fascination lay in their position just below that of humanity in the great chain of being. The literature of the period took rather for granted that the blacks of West Africa and the monkeys of the same region were closely related species and capable of interbreeding. Now, when an artist painted a dwarf next to a monkey, the message was conveyed that they too somehow belonged together, that although both bore a striking resemblance to normal people they were nevertheless subhuman. Officially, however, dwarfs were counted as fully human, dressed—sometimes resplendently—as people, baptized as Christians, and usually treated rather well. In pictures where a dwarf appears with a dog or a monkey, the patronizing hand of a master or mistress is always placed on the head of the animal and not on that of the dwarf. Was this a contradiction? Yes, perhaps, but humans have rarely been consistent.47 The ambiguous status of the dwarf is illustrated by the attitudes and actions of the Gonzaga household at Mantua in the sixteenth century. The Gonzagas had introduced dwarfs into their court and had ordered built, in their own residence, a suite of miniature rooms that had become famous. Like their masters, the short people were dressed in lush cloth of silver and gold. They were the privileged servitors of a household and yet also, in subtle ways, counted among the nonhuman members of a menagerie. Something of this ambivalence is suggested in the following passage from historian Lauro Martines's account of Renaissance life. " When in November 1515 the Venetian ambassadors to Milan passed through Mantua, they found the Marquis Francesco, disabled by syphilis, lying on a couch in a richly adorned room. His favorite dwarf, attired in gold brocade, attended him. Three pages stood nearby, as well as three of his pet greyhounds. Some of his falcons, reined by leashes, were also in the room; and the walls were hung with pictures of his favorite dogs and horses."48 Dwarfs often acted the fool so as to entertain their owners. They went by the label of dwarf-fools. However, not all fools were dwarfs. Indeed fools or buffoons could be perfectly normal people pretending to be half-wits in order to earn a livelihood. In ancient Greece and Rome, such

Fig. 22. Queen Henrietta Maria with Her Dwarf (Jeffery Hudson) by Sir Anthony Van Dyck. Note the position of the queen's hand over the monkey rather than over Hudson. (National Gallery of Art, Washington; Samuel H. Kress Collection)

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people were known as "parasites," or laughter-makers; they peddled a skill and traveled from place to place rather than settling down with one master. A similar profession existed in late medieval and Renaissance times. The buffoons plied their trade aggressively in market squares and in the halls of residences. While most of their jokes and tricks pleased, despite their impudence, some were so deeply offensive that, as punishment, the fake fools were made to be fools. As early as the twelfth century, the distinction between artificial and natural fools was clearly recognized. Natural fools were either born with some mental defect or had become that way for causes beyond their control. These persons could find shelter and employment in the households of the powerful and wealthy, where they were given over to the care of keepers who probably had the additional job of training their charges, enabling them to say and do things that evinced a witless wisdom. Natural fools, like dwarfs, seem to have been treated well. Some of them indeed became great pets, their value so recognized that they were sent from one potentate to another on loan or as outright gifts. Enid Welsford writes: In 1498 Alfonso d'Esté fell seriously ill, and Isabella sent her favourite fool to cheer him. His success was amazing. Alfonso writes of Matello in most enthusiastic terms, saying that he made him forget the severity of his illness. His appreciation indeed took an inconvenient form, for he was so unwilling to return him, that a courtier had to be sent to fetch him away. Later on, when Alfonso once more fell ill, his sister sent to him Matello and another buffoon, a gift which her brother declared was more welcome to him than the gift of a beautiful castle would have been.49 The fact that fools could be sent away on loan or as a gift and that this was indeed a common practice among Italian and German princes demonstrates that fools, however highly valued, were a personal property and disposable as other possessions—precious goods and animals—were disposable. Moreover, some masters were cruel and perverse and abused their fools by encouraging them to engage in acts of obscenity of which they in their befogged minds were not fully aware. Why did the potentates find deformity and dementia amusing rather than sad, reassuring rather than threatening? Although potentate and dwarf-fool lived in close physical proximity, there did exist the buffer of

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social distance which was just sufficient, it would appear, to provide the potentate with pleasing charitable feelings tinged by amusement: a little closer and the potentate would have found the deformity painful, a little farther apart and the potentate might lose that measure of sympathy which made both the charitable impulse and amusement possible. Having a half-wit or two, a dwarf or two, in court as objects of compassion, as charms and playthings, though a bit bizarre by the blander standards of modern taste, is still understandable. What strains our comprehension is the large number of such retainers in a few great households. Thus in 1566, Cardinal Vitelli gave a banquet in Rome at which no fewer than thirty-four dwarfs served. In seventeenth-century Paris, Monsieur and Madame Rambouillet were well known for the large number of fools they kept in their household. It was suggested that they chose their servants not for efficiency but for that tincture of absurd in their constitution. The aristocracy ofthat period, for all their ability to enjoy the subtleties of a Racine or a Fènelon, also appreciated crude humor and brutal practical jokes. In eighteenth-century Russia, Peter the Great kept many fools: no fewer than one hundred might assemble in the hall for feeding. Dwarfs, equally numerous, were married to one another to keep up the supply. One such wedding was attended by the czar himself and culminated in a ball, at which the members of court sat along the edges of the room so that they could enjoy an unimpeded view of the feasting and comical capers of the dwarfs. At the end of the ceremony and diversions, the newly married couple were carried to the czar's palace and bedded in his own bedchamber. Many of the fools in the court of Peter the Great were not, however, half-witted at all. They were normal people made to act the fool as a peculiarly humiliating form of punishment. The czar's plan was to send young men abroad for their education, but should they fail to benefit from the experience in ways the czar considered appropriate, they would be transformed into court fools upon their return. Anna, the czarina of Russia (1730-40), displayed a similar taste. She had the power to exercise it on whomever she pleased; not even noblemen were safe. In 1739, she celebrated a great feast on the occasion of the marriage of her court fool to a disreputable woman. She emphasized the absurdity of the affair by collecting guests from all the races of the Russian Empire, placing them in sledges drawn by every kind of animal, and making them dance their various national dances. The whole point of the affair centered on the fact

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that the court fool was perfectly sound of mind. He was a middle-aged nobleman forced into the humiliating role for crossing the empress on points of religion.50 "So-and-so is a fool!" We have all pronounced such judgments in moments of anger, knowing full well that their sole effect is to make us feel better. Despots of the past, however, had the power of forcing their victim to conform to the label. Whatever they declared became, to all outward appearances, true.

9 DOMINANCE AND AFFECTION: CONCLUSIONS

Pets are visible and precious. By contrast, "hands" or manpower and resources (so long as these are abundant) are invisible and have little value. Thus, while entire forests are cleared without a thought, a few treasured twigs may be saved, put in a basin to simulate a forest, and be much admired. Animals are slaughtered for food and clothing without a twinge of conscience. A few specimens and species, however, catch the fancy of people in a playful mood and are made into pampered pets or fervently supported causes. Humans are grossly exploited as hands and chattels with barely a thought. Some, however, are adopted as pets and given capricious attention. Attention is highly selective and bestows value. What prompts one to attend? The act may be prompted by lust, as in the case of the planter for his comely slave. It may be the result of an aesthetic taste joined to the prestige of having such taste: for instance, the gardener's pleasure in his bonsai, the dog owner's pleasure in his pure breed, and the eighteenthcentury European lady's pleasure in her Chinese domestic. And the attention may be the result of genuine affection, which is the flow of warmth and protective love from the strong to the weak, from the superior to the inferior: thus parents love their young children, the mistress grows fond of her personal maid, a man becomes attached to his dog, and the proud mind patronizes the body. Pets are a part of one's personal entourage. They are physically and emotionally close to their owner. They can be taken for granted and yet are never out of their owner's mind for long. Relationship to pets is 162

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intimate. What does intimacy imply? Gestures of physical intimacy may express equality and brotherhood: picture two friends with their arms around each other's shoulder. On the other hand, more often and (I believe) more deeply, they presuppose inequality: picture a mother hugging her child, a horsewoman patting the flank of her steed, or think of such historical bonds as that between a knight and his squire, a man and his valet. Intimacy has declined in modern times. A modern woman can still be intimate with her dog, allowing it to sleep at the foot of her bed, but she no longer has a maid to patronize, and even if she has, the maid can hardly share her bed, as was done in Europe even in the eighteenth century. A modern man may claim intimacy with nature—with wilderness itself. But this sense of ease in wilderness is possible only because wild animals and forests are no longer threatening. Wilderness, although not yet a pet to the degree that the garden and certainly the miniature garden is a pet, nonetheless is widely perceived by modern society to be a fragile existence that needs its care and protection. Equality presupposes a certain distance—the distance of respect as between two sovereign individuals. Friends can rarely be intimate with each other in ways that husband and wife can, not only because most societies maintain a state of inequality between man and woman but also because the married couple, by living together, encounter many occasions in which one member needs and receives the care of the other (as in sickness), thus introducing temporary bonds of inequality that nurture affection. Modern democratic society decries inequality between adults. Patronage and dependency draw such disapproval that even sickness may be felt as troubling because it puts one person under the authority of another. Familiarity, which is possible only when respect is curtailed, breeds affection—and, as the saying goes, contempt. That blend of affection and condescension (if not also a hint of contempt) is a characteristic attitude toward the pet. Modern society, by frowning upon permanent states of dependency, has weakened the ties of affection but it has simultaneously undercut opportunities for the development of sadomasochistic bondage between the powerful and the powerless. In intimate and unequal relationships, how is affection to be distinguished from teasing playfulness, patronage from condescension, or cruelty from love? The wordplay provides a key to these questions. Play is the quintessential activity of children. Through play children learn to master a world. In a world of play, fantasy easily becomes reality. A child

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gains confidence and a sense of power as he manipulates the things around him. Sticks and stones, toy soldiers and teddy bears, kittens and pups are all his subjects, pliant to his imagination and obedient to his command. When a doll or a pup turns recalcitrant, it can be punished. This power to dominate another—including the power to inflict pain and humiliation on another—is vaguely pleasurable. And yet there is also deep attach' ment. A child is attached to his toys as extensions of himself. They are his possessions; their worth reflects his worth; praise for them is praise for him. Of course, genuine affection also exists. In the unequal relationship with toys and small animals, the child can develop feelings of protectiveness and nurture—feelings that interpenetrate with his awareness of superiority and power. In the adult's world, play often has to yield to necessity. There is still time for play, but under restrained circumstances and with a sort of lid placed on the élan of imagination. In the world of primitive hunters and gatherers, mothers play with young children, and children, like the young everywhere, play with whatever is at hand, including small animals. Adults too may adopt animals and treat them as playthings. One example. Certain aboriginal tribes in Australia have domesticated the dog for a number of reasons, the practical among them, but they also keep other animals simply as pets. Wallabies, opossums, bandicoots, rats, even frogs and young birds are tied up in the camp to provide periodic amusement for their captors. The animals are fed and cared for in a capricious manner, and most of them soon die.1 In the egalitarian society of simple hunters and gatherers, human adults can treat animals as pets; they cannot, however, treat one another as pets. A teasing bond may exist, and such teasing implies a need to dominate—to convert another person into a clumsy object of fun. But the teaser is teased back as in a game between equals, and no permanent order of superiority and inferiority is established.2 Rituals and ceremonies, often incorporating song and dance, are an important part of many primitive societies, both agricultural and nonagricultural. These activities are not, however, play. They may have moments of fun and even of farce, but their fundamental purpose is the serious business of maintaining their world by ensuring the adequacy and timeliness of rain and harvest. In a ritual, participants feel that they are operating under rules and constraints not of their own making. What they do is necessary and not an uninhibited assertion of power and will. Rituals and

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ceremonials attained peaks of splendor in premodern high cultures. They were needed because even in high cultures food supply was uncertain, and the course of nature on which livelihood depended must be assured by ritualistic as well as material and technological means. However, high cultures have normally been able to support an elite, members of which enjoy a surplus of resources and of power that they can use freely in play. In other words, the elite are in the position of children whose fantasies and whims are catered to by the wealth and power at their command. At the top of the elite is the monarch, who would like to rule a kingdom that responds to his wish and will in every way. Ideally the kingdom runs with the ease and majesty of the cosmos: all things in it move around the throne, under the guiding hands of the ruler, as heavenly bodies move around the polestar or the sun. In reality, not even the most powerful monarch could create in his own realm an order of plenitude and of obedience that approximated his dreams. What he could aspire to was to construct dreamworlds on a much smaller scale. Call these dreamworlds works of art or playgrounds. Whatever we choose to call them now, they satisfied the longings of the potentate for the tangible as well as psychology ical assurance of luxury, for power and the deference it could command, and for the pleasure—sexually tinted—of being able to play freely (that is, more or less irresponsibly) with the comely creatures of the earth. What, in actuality, were these playgrounds? Palaces represented one type. An Oriental despot, unable to transform a whole realm to his taste, could at least build a palace to his liking and fill it with things that responded to his needs and whims; and all that he could see was ruled directly by him with the help of eunuchs who were his creatures. Another type of playground was the theater. As Stephen Orgel has shown, the Royal Spectacle was a substitute for the perfect realm that potentates in Renaissance Europe could not command. Only in the extravagant masques and plays could the potentates make themselves believe that their power was absolute and that they lived at the center of a well-ordered universe in which all people and nature itself deferred to their wish.3 But, perhaps the most universal of these playgrounds was the garden. Some of these gardens, we have noted, were built on the most lavish scale and packed with things for the delectation of their owners who, in the garden, could believe themselves divine. Take another look at the garden built in A.D. 607 for the Sui emperor. How was it furnished? Besides artifical mountains and lakes, which an army

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of laborers had constructed, the emperor had packed his garden with every variety of plant, including not only flowers and herbs but full-grown forest trees, every kind of animal, including not only fishes and frogs but also "golden gibbons and green deer," and, in addition, palaces and concubines. Of the concubines, history records that "all were beautiful, respectful, virtuous and lovely of face. Each group was chosen in turn by the emperor as the recipient of his imperial favors."4 Of course, great gardens in other cultures and times differed—perhaps in every detail— from that created for the Sui emperor. Nevertheless, all of them, European as well as Oriental, signified some proud man's yearning for a tangible world that matched his imagination, a world in which everything—rock, water, plant, manservant, or maid—deferred to his will and truckled to his pleasure. Within the confines of a garden, the constraints of nature and society are largely removed: a man there is sovereign among subjects, a child among toys. Palaces, theaters, and gardens are the playgrounds of the powerful and the rich. Note that they often interpenetrate, being parts of one idealized, semi-illusory world. Thus, palaces contain gardens and may themselves be located in large parks; both the palace and the garden, in China as well as in Renaissance and baroque Europe, are known to provide spaces for dramatic and musical performances. Note, moreover, that a palace is not just a playground. People live in it and servants work in it as well. Conversely, every large house that belongs to a person of power and wealth is not merely a place to live in, but also an idealized world and a sort of playground for the owner and his family. What are the evidences of power and play? What natural objects have been transformed, domesticated, and often reduced in size so as to become suitable decorations, toys, and pets in a great house? The answer would differ, of course, depending on time and place. In Europe, before 1700, the halls of a great house tended to be rather empty, with but few pieces of furniture, few decorations and knick-knacks. Perhaps the most prominent playthings in such a house were all animate—the large number of servants and hangers-on, possibly a dwarf or a fool, dogs of all sizes and breeds, monkeys, and exotic birds. After 1700, rooms tended to be increasingly cluttered with inanimate possessions, not only furniture but also bibelots and wall decorations. Nature was permitted to enter the house as landscape paintings and county maps, and, during the nineteenth century, as an exuberance of potted plants. The number and variety of animal pets declined. A

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few well-trained hounds, a toy dog or two for the mistress were favored. The domestic staff might still be large, but many servants became merely a part of the machinery of the house and were, in no sense of the word, pets. In addition to the "invisible" staff, a household also maintained liveried footmen. Conspicuous in attire and in such ceremonial acts as the announcement of dinner, footmen were in other situations trained to stand in the background and anticipate their employer's every wish with quiet, machinelike precision.5 The psychology of dominance and affection has its ambivalences and paradoxes. These have already been noted in earlier chapters, but we are now in a position to assemble them and offer some general conclusions. People who exploit nature for pleasure and for aesthetic and symbolic reasons seldom realize that they are doing harm to the plants and animals, distorting them into shapes they are not meant to have and, in the case of animals, forcing them into behavior that is not natural to them. People who exploit other humans for profit or pleasure have, by contrast, an uneasy conscience. The masters do not feel entirely comfortable in their positions of superiority and power. They need some kind of justification. One kind is the distinction between culture and nature, or between mind and body. Culture and mind have the right to dominate nature and body. In the second category are included not only plants and animals but children, women, slaves, and members of the lower class, especially if they are distinguishable from the masters by skin color or some other physical trait. Dominance normally takes the form of straight exploitation. When it takes the form of condescending playfulness, it expresses the belief that women and slaves, fools and blacks are immature and naive, animal-like, and sexual. Men of power, arrogating to themselves the attributes of mind and culture, find it pleasing to have around them humans of a lesser breed—closer to nature—on whose head they may lay an indulgent hand. And yet the relationship of culture to superiority and of nature to inferiority is neither clear nor firm. Culture, for instance, may be identified with effeminacy, frivolity, or decadence; nature with male power that is as often destructive as constructive. Culture can be the label of inconsequential activities—acts of refinement that are little more than bodily maintenance and acts of creativity that are little more than childlike games. Nature, by contrast, is an irresistible force capable of destroying or creating a world. The masters, then, assume the role of nature and

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patronize culture from a lordly distance, making an occasional appearance at the church bazaar or ballet. They see themselves as the true creators, the others—women mostly, and men engaged in occupations closely linked to women's world—as refiners and decorators. From the viewpoint of the masters, culture (thus perceived) is a glittering plaything that they can pick up and amuse themselves with as they wish. Note how women can also arrogate to themselves the superior role of nature and assign the inferior role of culture to men. Women, in this model, are a natural force, sometimes destructive, more often creative. They are the ones who create and sustain life and world at the f undamental level, while the children play with toys or conduct little agonistic games at their feet; and in this the women's view, men remain boys all their lives—they never quite outgrow their childish pride in their manufactures and games. Men who constantly need to show off what they can do and what they can make are boastful but endearing pets who, however, need to be put firmly in their place with a cutting retort or with a raised eyebrow from time to time. Power is the ability to overcome resistance. While there is pleasure in having resistances that can then be overcome, resistances that must be overcome repeatedly detract from the dignity of power. This is a probable reason for the deep ambivalence of potentates toward animate nature. Plants, animals, and human subjects all seem to have wills of their own. The delight of power is to make these wills submit to one's own will. Plants cannot be allowed to grow as their natures dictate. In a garden they are clipped anfl trimmed to conform to human aesthetic ideals. Moreover, as we have seen in chapters 3 and 4, minor alterations have not always proven sufficiently satisfying. Historically, in Europe as well as in the Orient, plants have been not only trimmed but grotesquely twisted and stunted, as though the garden-designers, drunk with power, want to know how far they can proceed in converting living things into artifacts. Twisted and stunted, plants still grow. Their submission is not complete until they have become inorganic. This curious desire for the inorganic is manifest in such ways as forcing plants to look like brick walls and stone pillars, substituting colored pebbles and paint for shrubs and flowers in parterres, and making mineral trees and fruits. Plants are at least rooted in place. Animals move and are far more difficult to control. They can be put into pits and cages but these purely physical devices are admissions of failure. In medieval and Renaissance

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images of the garden, animals other than birds are rarely shown. Chinese gardens boast birds and fishes, but rarely large mammals except in imperial parks. To foster an illusion of animal life, gardeners have cut hedges into the shapes of animals, sculpted menageries of stone or wooden beasts, and (in China) set up deeply corroded rocks that bear a resemblance to wild fauna and monsters. Certain European gardens contain ingenious mechanical animals, such as the singing birds and owl at the Villa d'Esté and the domestic animals of the highly contrived picturesque garden (Le Rocher) at Lunéville. These toys may break down, but otherwise they do not thwart the human will. Power over animals can be satisfyingly exerted in other ways. After ail, with skill and application animals can be thoroughly tamed. Even a lion can be turned into a deferential pet and made to "kneel" upon command. Moreover, people are able to breed animals into the shapes and characteristics they desire. Success in these endeavors gives people a godlike sense of power over life. This power they have used and abused. Breeders have created, we have seen, goldfish with bulging eyes and dogs that are genetically defective, and dogs of exceptional ugliness such as the shar+pei, which has corrugated skins that fold over like an unmade bed (fig. 23). Finally, there are the human pets, most difficult of all to control and train. Despite marked physical differences in appearance, people are still too much alike for one group to dominate another with ease and a clear conscience. How can the dominated be made to seem more obviously inferior so as to justify perpetual patronage? Nature itself has obliged by producing misshapen specimens and half-wits. Roman potentates and European princes of the Renaissance period found a ready source of amusement in them; and, indeed, to judge by the popularity of freak shows past and present, dwarfs and fools have a widespread appeal that transcends the perverted taste of a particular class. One reason why freaks enjoyed the patronage of the powerful is that they seemed fascinatingly unnatural, not only in the sense of departing strikingly from the norms of nature but also because they seemed, like extravagant artifacts, the products of an unbridled and cruel imagination. Potentates who saw themselves as free and whole persons saw their fools and dwarfs as partial and specialized beings, like animals and artifacts that could not be other than what they were. All human pets shared this limitation. Eunuchs and castrad, for example, were artifacts to the extent that they were made that way by surgery for narrow ends. And we have

Fig. 23. Fawn II, a one-year-old Chinese shar-pei, took top prize at the Ugly Dog Contest (August 1981 ) in Petaluma, California. The judges voted Fawn, who looked not unlike an unmade bed, the "ugliest by any standard." (Drawing by Wayne Howell)

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noted how in large aristocratic and upper-class households, the human potential of domestics could be narrowed down to one or two lines of specialized work—that, for instance, of a cupbearer, a reciter of poems at the dinner table, a decorative and decorous footman, and (in medieval China) a painter of orchids, a zither player, a trainer of insects, an imitator of animal noises, and an amusing poser of riddles.6 Humans so specialized seemed hardly human, and it was not surprising that potentates periodically failed to see their full humanity and exchanged them as curios and gifts as they did with other valued possessions. Note, furthermore, that the wearing of livery, the expressionless face and stiff posture when standing, and the disciplined, semimilitary, semiballetic steps when marching all served to highlight the artifactitious, puppetlike character of the valued servant. Plants make easy pets. They are attractive to look at, easy to maintain, and do not rebel except by dying. While making only minimal demands on the owner, they give him a sense of power and of virtue—the power of enabling a thing to grow and the virtue of care. Animals make more difficult pets, although much depends on size and temperament. Goldfish, for example, do not have to be taken for a walk or to the veterinarian. Their world—a bowl—is as narrowly circumscribed as that of a potted plant. Like plants, goldfish can be used almost purely as decoration, placed on a dining table next to a bed of cut flowers. In modern, affluent Western societies, dogs and cats can and do make large demands on their owners, not only in time and money but also in attention and personal care. It has sometimes been said that the owners have become domesticated and enslaved by their pets, so much work do they put in to keep their pets healthy and happy. But these services, commendable as they are as acts of devotion, also have the effect of emphasizing the animal's total dependence. Moreover, a relationship of dominance—of superior to inferior—is not in doubt so long as the owners feel free to bend down to pat their dog or cat on the head or run their hand down its coat. These are gestures of affection. They are bestowed by the superior on the inferior and can never be used between equals. Humans make intractable pets. Although they can be taught to accept their peculiar status through a combination of indoctrination and the threat of physical force, from the viewpoint of the masters success is never guaranteed. Human pets can always withhold love and rebel; they can also acquire power and wealth for themselves by subtle means. All these paths

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are open to them because, unlike an exploited farm slave or factory hand, the pet is by definition an object of value, to which attention is paid, however condescendingly or capriciously. Between master and personal slave there exists an intimacy of physical contact and regard that is closer than that between master and household servant and far closer than that between employer and worker in a capitalist society. Human pets, if they wish, can skillfijlly exploit this intimacy for their own benefit. In a patriarchal society, for example, powerful men may have for their enjoyment and prestige concubines or slave women. History, however, is full of stories of how some of these women, despite their lowly station, have managed to dominate their masters and acquire enormous riches and influence for themselves. Another well-known example is from the history of eunuchs. Humiliatingly deprived of their full manhood in order to serve as guardians of a potentate's women, some of them were nonetheless able to exploit their positions—including that of formal powerlessnesjS—to become, paradoxically, potentates themselves with nearly all the attributes and prerogatives of such persons except that of independence. A third example might be the mammy of the Old South. The basis of her power, like that of all privileged subordinates, lay in her access to and intimacy with the private and tender world of the powerful. Mammy raised her mistress's children and bound them to her with unbreakable ties of affection. She was the confidante not only of the children and the mistress but sometimes even of the master. A symbol of her authority was the whip, which she used on black and white servants alike when they thwarted her will. In moments of righteous anger, even the master and the mistress might not escape her tongue-lashing.7 But these prerogatives were hers only on condition of unquestioning loyalty. Concubine, eunuch, and mammy—all must show, if not feel, total devotion. Moreover, they knew (as all those around them knew) that their standing derived wholly from conditions of intimacy with another, sovereign source of power.

Dominance is the theme of this book. Now that we approach its end, we need to round out the picture by turning briefly to the converse of dominance—dependency and obedience, the widespread and seemingly easy acceptance of the status of pethood. The question of acceptance does not arise with respect to plants and comes to a head with respect to

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humans; and it is to the problem of human submission that we now turn. Why submit? First and foremost among the reasons is discrepancy in power. Consider this discrepancy as it exists between nature and people. Until the modern period, nature was perceived by most people in the world as overwhelmingly powerful. At different times and in different cultures, people have humbly regarded themselves as "children" and nature as "parent." Nature was a sovereign power that must not be crossed. It provided sustenance but also, often inexplicably, inflicted punishment. Whether the one or the other, humans chose to believe that nature showed parental concern and that it was their obligation to respond to this concern with respect and love.8 So completely did humans feel nature's dominance and their own helplessness that they frequently denied the initiatives they were able to take. They tended to minimize their role as creators and shapers of reality, despite all the evidences that stretched before them—fields and villages and (in the case of civilizations) cities of great size and splendor. Civilizations, after all, could emerge only through the mastery of nature. It is remarkable how consistently people in the past have thought it expedient to suppress this fact. From time to time there were boasts of progress and of subduing nature, but not often. Far more pervasive were the fears of offending the gods, of nature's revenge in the form of famine and pestilence, and of living in a world unbounded by externally imposed limits. Before the modern period, even in high civilizations, submission to nature and acceptance of a permanent state of childhood were the common posture. At a microscale, a vast discrepancy of power exists between parent and child. Childhood dependency is exceptionally long among humans, and childhood is pethood. Parents and other grownups play with young children as though they were kids or pups or dolls to be clothed and unclothed. Children have to be trained in special skills and are praised as they acquire them. Children are patted on the head for being "good," and usually for being "good at" something. Children learn to place value less on who they are than on what they can do, on the more or less specialized tasks and roles they can perform. They are pleased when they have won the approval of an adult for what they can do. And, of course, they look up to adults for protection, guidance, and affection. In a hierarchical society, members of the lower class are treated as perpetual minors to be shaped and patronized all their lives. The elite perceive and present paternalism as a natural order. It is natural for some

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to rule, provided the rule is benevolent, and it is natural for others to obey—and obey not grudgingly but as would filial children to their parents. Given the fact that most people have had the experience of submitting to nature and to human parents, it is not hard to understand why this paternalistic model of the social order should seem reasonable, especially when it is backed up—as it inevitably is—by irresistible force. We do know that this model has won acceptance in a remarkably wide range of social and historical contexts: think, for example, of the Chinese magistrate (the "father-official") and his charges, the feudal lord and his vassals, the shepherd-bishop and his flock, the Old South planter and his household, the German factory owner and his workers, among others 9 Inequality of power in society and acceptance by the dominated members of their status as a mere skill or even thing are suggested by the names that people assume. In Europe, whereas a nobleman is known by his title and his geographical base (for example, the duke of Bedford and the marquis de Rambouillet), the common man is usually known by his given (Christian) name, which may be altered to become a pet name, and sometimes also by his occupation, for example, Jim Baker. Title and geographical base define the power of a lord: some titles and geographical bases signify more power than do others. That is the extent of the lord's limitation. Otherwise, he is free—and he is, that is, he does not have to define himself further by a line of work. The common man, by contrast, clings to an identity given by a line of work. Skill is the source of his pride. He is baker. He makes things, and he himself is a sort ofthing—a fine tool that makes fine things. His master praises him not for what he is but for his having learned something and thereby become someone (or thing). The poet William Butler Yeats wrote: "Never shall a young man,/ Thrown into despair/By those great honey-coloured ramparts at your ear,/Love you for yourself alone/And not for your yellow hair." Actually, the idea of being loved for "oneself alone" is a highly individualistic, romantic, and abstract idea that could not have been widely held in any society. Most people are content to be appreciated for whatever quality or skill they may possess. To be categorized as someone with adorable ramparts at the ear or as an amusing poser of riddles does imply that severe limits have been put on what that person can be and do, but few people would in fact object. To be noticed at all is rewarding. What is being noticed matters relatively little. Most people—most of us—do not object to being a "thing," provided it is an appreciated thing. There is,

DOMINANCE AND AFFECTION: CONCLUSIONS

175

moreover, comfort in being a thing the value of which, being externally fixed, does not depend on internal striving. Passivity is an integral part of human experience and may well lie at the psychic core of our being. Historically, humans have had to be passive in the face of nature; then, with the grip of nature more or less broken, they have had to be passive in the face of the powers of society. Furthermore, every individual was once a child, passive to the initiative and rule of parents. It is far from true that humans, collectively or individually, have always felt the state of passivity to be a great burden and the product of oppression. After all, the Golden Age is placed in the past, when nature ruled with a benevolent hand; or when priest-kings ruled with a firm hand but also provided security; or when parents dominated but also cared. In retrospection, the status of being a child, a minor, or even a pet can have a certain appeal on account of the accompanying feelings of safety and passivity. At the level of individual experience, even a "shaker of the world" yearns to be dictated to at the marginal areas of his life, and no matter how great the thirst for life and activity, every person still welcomes nightfall and the pleasures of yielding to drowsiness and sleep. Given the long history of nature's dominance, it is not surprising that humans have learned to see merit in the submissive posture. Given the horrors of death and destruction and of enslavement to harsh labor that despots, throughout history, have fitfully inflicted on their fellow creatures, it is understandable why the status of pet, plaything, or adornment in some despot's household should seem bearable, even desirable. There is sweetness in yielding and pleasure in being dominated, especially if along with that domination come intimacy with power and tangible rewards, not the least of which are power's gestures of affection. While passivity is both necessary and desirable, the ability to dominate is even more necessary and desirable because it is a vital sign of life. Children everywhere begin their careers of power by playing first with inanimate toys, then with small, crawling things. Adults weakened and disoriented by disease or age may regain a sense of life by, first, playing with plants; then, as their conditions improve they take on the greater challenge of playing with tame animals. Play, in these instances, ideally mixes dominance with affection, control with nurturing care. In actuality, however, the toys are broken and the animals are emasculated, discarded, or dead, as the children grow up to occupy larger stages of action and as adult

176

DOMINANCE AND AFFECTION: CONCLUSIONS

patients, to the extent that their sense of power is restored, resume the more difficult task of ordering other ^people. Human relation with nature is seldom pure. Whether we use plants and animals for economic or playful and aesthetic ends, we use them; we do not attend to them for their own good, except in fables. As to our relation with other people, exploitation to some degree is unavoidable in any hierarchical society. In all civilizations it can be extremely harsh, even in the creation of seemingly harmless cultural artifacts such as the pleasure garden. The exercise of power, in itself, can give pleasure; perhaps that is one reason why exploitation is so pervasive. However, there is pleasure of a special sadoerotic kind when power is used to reduce other humans to the status of pets. Whereas a child can order toy soldiers and dolls around as though they were real people, a potentate has the satisfaction of playing with real people as though they were stuffed toys. In human relations, power is not inevitably abused. A parent or a teacher, for instance, may indeed try to control a child but only so that he or she may grow and prosper. Friends can use the power at their disposal to generate for each other, to use Roland Barthes's phrase, "spaces that resonate/* In each case, virtue goes out of the donor, leaving behind at least a temporary sense of depletion; simultaneously, the recipient gains a new expanse of life. What transpires is an act so rare as to escape the coarse observational net of social science; it is power as creative attention, or love.

NOTES

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1. Pitrim A. Sorokin, The Ways and Power of Love (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954). 2. Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967). CHAPTER 2. POWER AND DOMINANCE 1. George Santayana, Reason in Society, vol. 2 of The Life of Reason (1905; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1980), 81. 2. Colin Wilson, Origins of the Sexual Impulse (London: Arthur Baker, 1963), 167. 3. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Humanist Without Portfolio (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1963), 383-84. 4. John Updike, Picked-Up Pieces (New York: Knopf, 1975), 89. 5. J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Man in Battle (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), 51. 6. Daniel David Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924), 17. 7. S. N. Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 125. 8. Quoted by Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Re/lections from Damaged Life (London: NLB, 1978), 78. 9. Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil (New York: Free Press, 1975), 1-2. 10. Quoted by F. L. Lucas, The Drama of Chekhov, Synge, Yeats, and Pirandello (London: Cassell, 1965), 13. 11. W. N. P. Barbellion, Enjoying Life and Other Literary Remains (London: Chatto and Windus, 1919), 107. 12. Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, trans. Robin Campbell (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1969), 146. 13. Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (New York: Scribner's, 1971), 65. 14. Roy Perrott, The Aristocrats: A Portrait of Britain's Nobility and Their Way of Life Today (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 202. 15. Bertrand de Jouvenal, On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth (New York: Viking, 1949), 101. 177

178

NOTES TO PAGES 12-23

16. Wolfram Eberhard, Conquerors and Rulers: Social Forces in Medieval China (Leiden: E. JL Brill, 1965), 122-23. 17. Arthur F. Wright, The Sui Dynasty (New York: Knopf, 1978), 49-50. 18. Guette Ziegler, The Court of Versailles in the Reign of Louis XIV (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), 30. 19. Karl Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 152-53. 20. Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), 389-90. 21. Malcolm Muggeridge, Things Past (New York: Morrow, 1978), 71. 22. Desmond Morris, Intimate Behavior (New York: Random House, 1971), 158. 23. Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet (New York: Braziller, 1963), 360-61. 24. David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), 88. 25. Jacques le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 49. 26. See the short stories of Harvey Swados in On tfie Line (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957). 27. P. Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist ( 1899; reprint, New York: Horizon Press, 1968), 10. 28. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 4, pt. 2: "Mechanical Engineering" (Cambridge at the University Press, 1965), 132, 160. CHAPTER 3. GARDENS OF POWER AND OF CAPRICE 1. Cicero, De natura deorum, trans. H. Rackham (New York: Putnam's, 1933), 271. 2. Mencius, The Four Books, trans. James Legge (New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1966), bk. 3, pt. 2, 674-75. 3. Miles Hadfield, The Art of the Garden (New York: Dutton, 1965), 93. 4. Lucy Norton, comp. and trans., Saint-Simon at Versailles (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1958), 265. 5. Loraine Kuck, The World of the Japanese Garden (New York and Tokyo: Walker/Weatherhill, 1968), 138. 6. Quoted in Sheila Haywood, "The Indian Background—The Emperors and Their Gardens," in The Gardens ofMughul India: A History and A Guide, ed. Sylvia Crowe et al. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1972), 93. 7. Axel Boethius, The Golden House of Nero: Some Aspects of Roman Architecture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 108-09; Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1957), 224-25; Tacitus Annals 15.42. 8. S. Lang, "The Genesis of the English Landscape Garden," in The Picturesque Garden and lis Influence Outside the British Isles, ed. Nikolaus Pevsner (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1974), 20, 23; Margaret Jourdain, The Work of William Kent: Artist, Painter, Designer and Landscape Gardener

NOTES TO PAGES 23-36

179

(London: Country Life Limited, 1948), 76. 9. Dora Wiebenson, The Picturesque Garden in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 11-12. 10. Robert and Monica Beckinsale, The English Heartland (London: Duckworth, 1980), 186; Edward Malins, English Landscaping and Literature 1660-1840 (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 99. 11. Maggie Keswick, The Chinese Garden: History, Art and Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1978), 53. Likewise in Renaissance Italy. "Borso d'Esté, lord of Ferrara, decided to have a mountain built on the flat Ferrarese landscape, in January 1471. All the peasants of the region were put under a decree of forced labor; ships, wagons, and carts were employed to haul earth and rocks to the site..." Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 267. 12. Teresa McLean, Medieval English Gardens (New York: Viking, 1980), 106. 13. William Howard Adams, The French Garden 1500-1800 (New York: Braziller, 1979), 40, 47. 14. Bernard Palissy, The Delectable Garden, trans. Helen M. Fox (Peekskill, N.Y.: Watch Hill Press, 1931), 22-25. 15. The advice of a late Ming dynasty work on the garden, the Yuan Yeh ( 1634). See Osvald Siren, Gardens of China (New York: Ronald Press, 1949), 22. 16. A. Richard Turner, The Vision of Landscape in Renaissance Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 197-98. 17. Helen M. Fox, André le Nôtre: Garden Architect to Kings (New York: Crown, 1962), 31,33,35. 18. Edward Norgate, Miniatura: or The Art of Limning, MS written between 1648 and 1650, ed. Martin Hardie, (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1919), 43. 19. Derek Clifford, A History of Garden Design (London: Faber and Faber, 1962), 140. 20. Nan Fairbrother, Men and Gardens (New York: Knopf, 1956), 94. 21. Pierre de Nolhac, The Trianon of Marie-Antoinette (New York: Brentano's, n.d.), 203-04. 22. Quoted by Wiebenson, Picturesque Garden in France, 97-98. 23. Donald N. Wilber, Persian Gardens and Garden Pavilions (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1979), 14. 24. Hung Lu Meng (The Story of the Stone), chap. 17, trans. H. B. Joly ( 1892). 25. Siren, Gardens of China, 19. 26. Ibid., 63. 27. Keswick, Chinese Garden, 119. 28. Chuin Tung, "Chinese Gardens: Contrasts, Designs," in Chinese Houses and Gardens, ed. Henry Inn and S. C. Lee (New York: Hastings House, 1950), 28. 29. The Story of the Stone, chap. 17, trans. David Hawkes (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1973), 346. 30. Fox, André k Nôtre, 90. 31. Adams, The French Garden, 84.

180

NOTES TO PAGES 3 7-51

CHAPTER 4. FOUNTAINS AND PLANTS 1. Mencius, The Four Books, bk. 6, pt. 1,852. 2. Jacques Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion 1250-1276 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1962), 51-52; A. C. Moule, Quinsai (London: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 29-30. 3. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 133-34. 4. Wilber, Persian Gardens, 15. 5. Crowe et al, The Gardens ofMughul India, 45, 140, 148, 158; Jonas Lehrman, Earthly Paradise: Garden and Courtyard in Islam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 113. 6. Pierre Grimai, Les Jardins Romains (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969), 293. 7. Heien H. Tanzer, The Villas of Pliny the Younger (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), 23. 8. Eleanor Clark, Rome and A Villa (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952), 148. 9. Hunter Rouse and Simon Ince, History of Hydraulics (New York: Dover, 1963), 32. "Another popular belief is that the aqueducts were an efficient triumph of Roman engineering genius, whereas it is clear from Frontinus that they all leaked like sieves." See H. C. V. Morton, The Waters of Rome (London: Connoisseur and Joseph, 1966), 35. 10. David R. Coffin, The Villa d'Esté at Tivoli (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 38. 11. Georgina Masson, Italian Gardens (New York: Abrams, 1961), 136. 12. Morton, Waters o/Rome, 288. 13. Quoted in Peter Coats, Great Gardens of the Western World (New York: Putnam, 1963), 87. 14. Norton, Saint-Simon at Versailles, 262. 15. Adams, The French Garden, 88. 16. Fox, André le Nôtre, 101-02. 17. Adams, The French Garden, 88. 18. Fairbrother, Men and Gardens, 96; George F. Hervey and Jack Hems, The Book of the Garden Pond (London: Faber and Faber, 1970), 27; Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 157; Coffin, Villa d'Esté, 28. 19. The Complete Works of Michael de Montaigne, "Montaigne's Journey into Italy," William Hazlitt, trans. (New York: Worthington, 1889), 591. 20. Montaigne, Complete Works, 612. 21. William Cowper, Poetry and Prose, comp. Brian Spiller (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968), 462. 22. Masson, Italian Gardens, 148. 23. Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum or a Natural History (first published in 1627), in The Works of Francis Bacon (Boston: Brown and Taggard, 1862), 5:392. 24. John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris ( 1629; reprint, Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1975), 22, 245, 338-39.

NOTES TO PAGES 51-70

181

25. Eleanor Perényi, Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden (New York: Random House, 1981), 33. 26. Tanzer, Villas of Pliny, 18, 22-23. 27. McLean, Medieval English Gardens, 100. 28. Giovanni Rucellai, Ed II Suo Zibaldone, ed. Alessandro Perosa (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1960), 21. 29. Quoted in Marie Luise Gothein, A History of Garden Art, trans. Mrs. Archer-Hind (New York: Dutton, 1928), 1:212-13. 30. Hadfield, The Art of the Garden, 19. 31. Franklin Hamilton Hazlehurst, Jacques Boyceau and the French Formal Garden (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1966), 39. 32. Francis Bacon, Of Gardens (1625; reprint, Northampton, Mass.: Gehenna Press, 1959). 33. The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, or Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary 1685-1697, ed. Christopher Morris (London: Cresset Press, 1947), 341. 34. Alexander Pope in The Guardian, September 29,1713, no. 173; quoted in Malins, English Landscaping and Literature, 23-24. 35. Ronald Ely the, Aken/ield: Portrait of An English Village (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969), 107. 36. Twin Cides Reader, April 30, May 7,1981. 37. Rolf Stein, "Jardin en Miniature d'Extrême-Orient," Bulletin de l'Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient 42 (1942): 1-104 (Hanoi). 38. Arthur de Carle Sowerby, Nature in Chinese Art (New York: John Day, 1940), 156. 39. See E. Chavannes, Le T'ai Shan (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1910); Keswick, Chinese Garden, 37. 40. Stein, "Jardin en Miniature," 28. 41. Perényi, Green Thoughts, 76-78. 42. Keswick, Chinese Garden, 38. 43. Stein, "Jardin en Miniature," 8; Keswick, Chinese Garden, 49. 44. For instance, Doug Hall and Don Black, The South African Bonsai Book (Capetown: Howard Timmins, 1976), 20. 45. Keswick, Chinese Garden, 49. 46. Wilber, Persian Gardens, 8-9. 47. Gothein, History of Garden Art, 148-49. 48. Ibid., 190-9L 49. Martin H. Krieger, " What's Wrong with Plastic Trees?" Science 179(1973): 446-55. CHAPTER 5. ANIMALS: FROM POWERS TO PETS 1. The Letters of Evelyn Underhill, Charles Williams, ed. (London: Longmans, Green, 1943), 301-02. 2. Walker D. Wyman, MythicaZ Creatures of the North Country (River Falls,

182

NOTES TO PAGES 70-80

Wis.: State University Press, 1969). 3. Edward H. Schafer, The Vermilion Bird: Tang Images of the South (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 206-07. 4. Martin P. Nilsson, Greek Popular Religion (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940), 10-14. 5. Gustave Loisel, Histoire des ménageries: de l'antiquité à nos jours (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1912), 1:18-19; M. Oldôeld Howey, The Cat in the Mysteries of Religion and Magic (London: Rider, 1931), 145. 6. Zofia Ameisenowa, "Animal-headed Gods, Evangelists, Saints and Righteous Men," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 12 (1949): 21-45. 7. Francis Klingender, Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages, ed. Evelyn Antal and John Harthan (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971 ), 302-03; Wera von Blankenburg, Heilige und dämonische Tiere: die Symbolsprache der deutsch Ornamentik im frühen Mittelalter (Leipzig: Koehler &L Amerlang, 1943). 8. Charles Diehl, Manuel d'art Byzantin (Paris: Librairie Auguste Picard, 1925 ), 1:368. 9. The Travels of Marco Poîo, R. E. Latham, trans. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1958), 111-12. 10. George Jennison, Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1937), 30-35. 11. Pliny Natural History, bk. 8, H. Rackham, trans. (London: Heinemann, 1940), 3:5,127. 12. Seneca's Letters to Lucilius (no. 85), E. Phillips Barker, trans. (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1932), 2:41-42. 13. Jennison, Animals for Show, 65, 71-72,90. 14. Loisel, Histoire des ménageries, 84-89; Jennison, Animals for Show, 123-24. 15. Heini Hediger, Man and Animal in the Zoo (London: Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 11. 16. James Fischer, Zoos of the World (London: Aldus Books, 1966), 23-43. 17. E. R. Hughes, Two Chinese Poets: Vignettes of Han Life and Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 27. 18. Edward A. Armstrong, Saint Francis: Nature Mystic (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 7; Loisel, Histoire des ménageries, 163. 19. Klingender, Animals in Art, 447-49. 20. "Cortes's Account of the City of Mexico; from his Second Letter to the Emperor Charles V," Old South Leaflets (Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, n.d.), vol. 2, no. 35, pp. 9-10. 21. Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 52-53. 22. Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 22-33; Harris, Art of Barnum, 33. 23. Altick, Shows of London, 317-19; James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast:

NOTES TO PAGES 82-91

183

Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 54, 63. 24. William Mann, Wild Animals in and out of the Zoo (New York: Smithsonian Scientific Series, 1930), 45. 25. Hediger, Man and Animai, 116.

26. Ibid., 121-23.

27. Vera Hegi, Les Captifs du zoo (Lausanne: Spes, 1942), 8,13; quoted in Henri F. Ellenberger, "The Mental Hospital and the Zoological Garden," in Animals and Man in Historical Perspective, ed. Joseph and Barrie Klaits (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 69. 28. Robert R. Reed, Jr., Bedlam on the Jacobean Stage (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 25. 29. Albert Deutsch, The Mentally III in America, 2d ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), 64-65. 30. John Prest, The Garden of Eden: The Botanic Garden and the Re-Creation of Paradise (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981 ), 25-26,51, 54, pi. 39.

31. Ibid., 84.

32. 33. 34. 35.

Adams, The French Garden, 18. Prest, Cárdeno/ Eden, 44-45. Keswick, Oiinese Garden, 148. Tzu'hsui, Record of Hua Yang Palace, trans. Grace Wan; quoted in Keswick, Chinese Garden, 54. 36. Fairbrother, Men and Gardens, 92. CHAPTER 6. ANIMAL PETS: CRUELTY AND AFFECTION 1. Kathleen Szasz, Petishism: Pets and Their People in the Western World (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), p. xiii. 2. Glenn Radde, personal communication. See Robert H. Wilbur, "Pets, Pet Ownership and Animal Control: Social and Psychological Attitudes," The National Conference on Dog and Cat Control (1975), Denver, Proceedings (1976), 21-34. 3. On castrating instruments, see Omaha Vaccine Company Summer Catalog 1983. 4. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Harmless People (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 51-52. 5. Ibid., 53. 6. Edward Moffat Weyer, The Eskimos; Their Environment and Folkways (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1932), 73. 7. Knud Rasmussen, * Intellectual Life of the Iglulik Eskimos," Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24, The Danish Expedition to Arctic North America, vol. 7, no. 1, 1929 (Copenhagen), p. 74.

8. Ibid., 56.

9. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1940), 37.

184

10. Ibid, 27.

NOTES TO PAGES 92-104

11. George Santayana, Dominations and Powers (New York: Scribner's, 1951), 75. 12. Quoted in Margaret Titcomb, Dog and Man in the Ancient Pacific ( Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publication 59, 1969), 3-4. 13. Photograph in Adolph H. Schultz, "Some Factors Influencing the Social Life of Primates in General and of Early Man in Particular," in Social Life of Early Man, ed. S. L. Washburn (Chicago: Aldine, 1961), 72. 14. Titcomb, Dog and Man, 9-10. 15. S. L. Washburn, "Speculations of the Interrelations of the History of Tools and Biological Evolution," in The Evolution of Man's Capacity for Culture, ed. J. N. Spuhler (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1959); S. L. Washburn and C. S. Lancaster, "The Evolution of Hunting," in Man the Hunter, ed. R. B. Lee and I. DeVore (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), 293-303, esp. 293, 300. 16. George F. Hervey and Jack Hems, The Goldfish (London: Faber and Faber, 1968), 248-49.1 have depended on this work for the section on goldfish. 17. Japanese Goldfish: Their Varieties and Cultivation (Washington, D.C.: W. F. Roberts, 1909), 37. 18. Quoted by Hervey and Hems, Goldfish, 77. 19. George Hervey, The Goldfish of China in the Eighteenth Century (London: The China Society, 1950), 33. 20. Ibid., 26. 21. Hervey and Hems, Goldfish, 228. 22. Ibid., 240. 23. H. H. Sculkrd, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 250-59. 24. Frederick E. Zeuner, A History of Domesticated Animals (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 36-43,46-49,51-63. 25. Juliet Clutton~Brock, Domesticated Animais from Early Times (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 22-24. 26. Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1964), 24. 27. John Paul Scott and John L. Fuller, Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 29. 28. M. Hilzheimer, Animai Remains from Tell Asmar, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization, no. 20 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941); P. E. Newberry, Beni Hasan, part I, in F. L. Griffeth, éd., Archaeological Survey of Egypt, Egypt Exploration Fund (London: Kegan Paul, Trübner Co., 1893). 29. G. M. Trevelyan, English SociaZ History (London: Longman, Green, 1942), 22-23. 30. Richard Blome, The Gentlemans Recreation (London: S. Roycroft, 1686), quoted in Scott and Fuller, Sociaî Behavior of the Dog, 46-47. 31. Grace E. L. Boyd, "Poodle," in The Book of the Dog, ed. Brian VeseyFitzgerald (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1948), 598-99.

NOTES TO PAGES 105-17

185

32. V. W. F. Collier, Dogs of China and Japan in Nature and Art (New York: Fredrick A, Stokes, 1921); Annie Coath Dixey, The Lion Dog of Peking (London: Peter Davies, 1931); Clifford L. B, Hubbard, "Pekinese," in Vesey-Fitzgerald, Book of the Dog, 583-86. 33. Rumer Godden, The Butterfly Lions: The Pekinese in History, Legend and Art (New York: Viking, 1978), 137. 34. Collier, Dogs of China and japan, 53-54. 35. Lorenz, Man Meets Dog, 88-90. 36. Godden, Butterfly Lions, 159. 37. Nicholas Cox, The Gentleman's Recreation (1677; reprint, East Ardsley, 1973); quoted in Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of Modern Sensibility (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 60. 38. W. L. McCandlish, "Breeding for Show," in Vesey-Fitzgerald, Book of the Dog, 84. 39. Winnie Barber, "The Canine Cult," in ibid., 105. 40. J. R. Ackerley, My Dog Tulip (New York: Fleet, 1965), 68, 77, 84. 41. A. Croxton~Smith, "The Dog in History," in Vesey-Fitzgerald, Book of the Dog, 24. 42. Pliny's Natural History in Philemon Holland's Translation, P. Turner, ed, (London: Centaur Press, 1962), 316. 43. " Alcibiades," in Plutarch's Lives (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 238. 44. Gladys Scott Thomson, Life in a Noble Household 1641-1700 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937), 234. 45. Thomas de Grey, The Compleat Horse^Man, 3d ed. 1656; quoted in K. Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 100; see Trevelyatv English Social History, 280-81, 406-07. 46. Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, The Domestic Dog: An introduction to Its History (London: Routiedge and Kegan Paul, 1957), 67. 47. Turner, Reckoning with the Beast, 19. 48. Mary Renault, The Nature of Alexander (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1983), 158, 168; Norton, Saint-Simon at Versailles, 260; Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II of Prussia called Frederick the Great, ed. John Clive (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 469. 49. SylviaTownsend Warner, T. H. White (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967), 72, 211-13. 50. Lorenz, Man Meets Dog, 138-39, 194-95. CHAPTER 7. CHILDREN AND WOMEN 1. Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: ' ' Woman's Sphere1 ' ¿n Neu; England 1750-1835 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), 47. 2. Jules Henry, Jungle People: A Kaingàng Tribe of the Highlands of Brazil (J. J. Augustin, 1941), 18. 3. Lloyd deMause, "The Evolution of Childhood," in The History of Childhood, ed. Lloyd deMause (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1975), 21.

186

NOTES TO PAGES 117-26

4. Ibid., 31. 5. Hans Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1932), 438; Cora E. Lutz, "Musonius Rufiis, 'The Roman Socrates,' " in Alfred R. Bellinger, ed., Yale Classical Studies, vol. 10 (1947), 101 ; Pierre Grimai, Love in Ancient Rome (New York: Crown, 1967), 106-07; Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, 131; Petronius, The Satyricon, trans. William Arrowsmith (New York: Mentor Books, 1960). 6. E. Soulié and E. de Barthélémy, eds., Journal de Jean Héroard sur V enfance et la jeunesse de Louis XIII, 1601-1610 (Paris: Firrnin Didot Frères, 1868), 1:34, 35, 45; Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 101. 7. Aries, Centuries of Childhood, 47, 130-31. 8. In New England, "as early as the 1760s school districts began the practice of hiring women rather than men as teachers for summer sessions, which were for very young children and older girls, who were excluded from winter terms." Cott, Bonds of Womanhood, 30. 9. Aries, Centuries of Childhood, 103. 10. Philip E. Slater, The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 30-31. 11. Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 148-49. 12. Peggy Reeves Sanday, Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 115. 13. J. J. Rousseau, "Sur la femme," Oeuvres completes (Paris: Hachette), 6: 28; quoted in Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 149. 14. Annette Kolodny, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 15. 15. The idea of women's speech as blunt, lacking the subtlety of men's, appears among the Merinda tribe in Madagascar. See Michèle Zimbalist Rosaldo, "A Theoretical Overview," in Women, Culture, and Society, éd. Michèle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 20. 16. Robert Hans van Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961), 17. 17. Quoted in ibid., 224. 18. Ibid., 184. 19. Ray Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981 ), 28-29. 20. Gulik, Sexual Life in Ancient China, 189-90. 21. Barnette Miller, Beyond the Sublime Gate: The Grand Seraglio ofStambul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1931), 96. 22. N. M. Penzer, The Harem: An Account of the Institution as It Existed in thePalace of the Turkish Sultans with a History of the Grand Seraglio from the Foundation to

NOTES TO PAGES 126-36

187

the Present Time (London: George G. Harrap, 1936), 179. 23. Despite Lady Mary Worley Montagu's dismissal of this custom as myth, Penzer believes that it has some basis in fact. Ibid. 24. Perényi, Green Thoughts, 259-70. 25. C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 12. 26. Perényi, Green Thoughts, 263. 27. See Lewis Mumford on the "romantic suburb" in The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961), 491. 28. Cott, Bonds of Womanhood, 5. 29. Quentin Bell, On Human Finery, rev. ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), 142; see also Richard Sennett, The Pall of Public Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 169 30. Other characterizations occur in the novels of Thackeray, Dickens, and Disraeli. 31. Henrik Ibsen, "A Doll's House," in Six Plays, trans. Eva Le Gallienne (New York: Modern Library, 1953), 76. CHAPTER 8. SLAVES, DWARFS, FOOLS 1. Philip Mason, Patterns of Dominance (London: Oxford University Press, 1971); Barrington Moore, Jr., Injustice: The Social Basis of Obedience and Revolt (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1978). 2. W. C. Curry, The Middle English Ideal of Personal Beauty (Baltimore: J. H. Fürst, 1916); J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth I (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1961), 42. 3. Jacques J. Maquet, The Premise of Inequality in Ruanda: A Study of Political Relations in a Central African Kingdom (London: Oxford University Press, 1961). 4. The Politics of Aristotle, bk. 1, chap. 5, trans. Ernest Barker (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 13-14. 5. W. H. Bruford, Germany in the Eighteenth Century: The Social Background of the Literary Revival (Cambridge at the University Press, 1939), 58. 6. "Lord Curzon, seeing British troops bathing in India, reflected how strange it was that the poor should have such white skin." In Philip Mason, Prosperous Magic: Some Thoughts on Class and Race (London: Oxford University Press, 1962),!. 7. Marcus Porcius Cato, On Agriculture, trans. W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash (London: Heinemann, 1934), 9; Plutarch's Lives, trans. John Dryden and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 414. 8. Crates (5th century B.C.) in The Beasts. Quoted by Thomas Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 87-88. 9. Hans Licht, Sexual Life in Ancient Greece; William L. Westermann, The Slave

188

NOTES TO PAGES 13 7-48

System of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1955), 118. 10. Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 186-90. 11. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, 78-79. 12. Yang Lien^sheng, "Great Families of Eastern Han," in Chinese Social History, ed. E'Tu Zen Sun, trans. John DeFrancis (Washington, D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies, 1956), 115. 13. The Natural History of Pliny, bk. 33, chap. 6, John Bostock and H. T. Riley, trans. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1858), 6: 81. 14. Petronius, The Satyricon. 15. Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 424. 16. Ibid., 456-57; Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, 28-29. 17. James Fenimore Cooper's observation when he was in London. Quoted by Frank E. Huggett, Life Below Stairs: Domestic Servants in England from Victorian Times (London: John Murray, 1977), 27. 18. Ibid., 13. 19. James Walvin, Black and White: The Negro and English Society 1555-1945 (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1973), 7-11. 20. J. Jean Hecht, "Continental and Colonial Servants in Eighteenth-Century England," Smith College Studies in History, 40, ( 1954): 34,37; Walvin, Black and White, 48. 21. Hecht, "Continental and Colonial Servants," 36n. 22. F. O. Shy lion, Black Slaves in Britain (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 11. 23. Ibid., 9. 24. Douglas A. Lorimer, Colour, CZass and the Victorians (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), 86-89. 25. Thomas Carlyle, "The Nigger Question, 1849,"inCritical and Miscellaneous Essays (London: Chapman and Hall, 1837-66), 4: 357-58. 26. Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone, vol. 3, "The Warning Voice," 157. 27. Natural History of Pliny, 81; Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery, 34, 80. 28. Walvin, Black and White, 66; J. H. Ingraham, ed., The Sunny South; or The Southerner at Home (1860; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968), 69-70; see also Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 54-58. 29. See the names of servants in Cao Xueqin, Story of the Stone. 30. Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 161-62. 31. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Knopf, 1956), 172. 32. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 336.

NOTES TO PAGES 148-74

189

33. Ibid., 61,332,334. 34. Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855; reprint, New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1968), 132-33. 35. Genovese, Roil, Jordan, Roîî, 512-13. 36. Stampp, Peculiar Institution, 326-27. 37. Ibid., 329. 38. Jordan, White Over Black, 154-56. 39. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.5. 60-65, trans. W. Miller, vol. 2 (1914), The Loeb Classical Library. 40. N. M. Panzer, The Harem (London: Harrap, 1936), 132-33. 41. Huang, 1587: A Year of No Significance, 13, 19-21. 42. Sacheverell Sitwell, Southern Baroque Revisited (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 224-39; Angus Heriot, The Castrad in Opera (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1956). 43. E. Tietze-Conrat, Dwarfs and Jesters in Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1957), 7, 14; Leslie Fiedler, Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 50-51. 44. Tietze^Conrat, Dwarfs and Jesters, 9. 45. Enid Welsford, The Fool: His Social and Literary History (London: Faber and Faber, n.d.), 59-60. 46. Ibid., 135; Tietze-Conrat, Dwarfs and Jesters, 80. 47. Tietze-Conrat, Dwarfs and Jesters. 48. Martines, Power and Imagination, 231. 49. Welsford, The Fool, 132-33. 50. Ibid., 182-83. CHAPTER 9. DOMINANCE AND AFFECTION: CONCLUSIONS 1. Zeuner, History of Domesticated Animais, 39. 2. Colin M. Turnbull, The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1962), 113. 3. Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissanee (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975). 4. Sui Yang Ti Hai Shan Chi (Sea and Mountain Records of Sui Yang^ti), in the T'ang Sung Cfi'uan Cfi'i Cfii (Collection of Fictional Works of the T'ang and Sung Dynasties), trans. Alexander Soper. See Kuck, World of the Japanese Garden, 19-20. 5. Yi'Fu Tuan, Segmented Worlds and Self: Group Life and Individual Conscious* ness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 52-85. 6. Gernet, Daily Life in China, 93. 7. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 355-57. 8. Yi-Fu Tuan, "Geopiety: A Theme in Man's Attachment to Nature and to Place," in Geographies of the Mind, ed. David Lowenthal and Martyn J. Bowden (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 11-39. 9. On German factory worker docility, see Moore, injustice, 258-59.

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INDEX

Affection: distinguished from other feelings, 1-2, 5; pastoralists for their stock, 91-92; for dogs, 109-14; for children, 115, 116, 118-19; and inequality, 162-64 Alexander the Great (356-323 B.c.): his pets Bucephalus and Peritas, 112-13 Animal deities, 70-72 Animals in the garden: of rock and wood, 33,34,55,56,86,87,169; mechanical, 46-47,67,169; made of plants, 53,57, 62-63; stuffed, 85 Artificial plants: medieval European, 52-53; Chinese, 66; Islamic, Persian, and Byzantine, 66-67,72; modern home and city, 67-68

China: and nomads, 11-12; size of labor teams, 12,20; kowtow, 13; Sui Yang-ti's toys, 17; gardens, 19,24,25,27,29-36, 38, 60-63, 66, 86, 165-66; fountains, 38-39; hunting preserve, 76, 86; goldfish, 95-99; dogs, 104-06; harem, 123-25, 166 Cicero (106-43 B.C.): on dominance of nature, 18 Circus and museums, 74, 78-79 Civilization: extravagance of, 10-11; luxury and sweat, 14; menagerie and cosmos, 75-76; hunting as sport, 103-04, 111; and harshness, 176 Cosmos, 18, 75, 85, 165 Cruelty: unselfawareness of, 2; sadistic taunting, 15, 80, 121 (see humiliation); toward laborers, 21; toward plants, 28, 62-63; toward the insane, 83-84; among hunter-gatherers, 89-90; toward animals, 106,108-09,110,111; toward children (see sexual abuse); in rage, 121

Bacon, Francis (1561-1626): on altering the shape of fruits, 50-51; topiary fantasies, 55 Becker, Ernest: on incorporation (eating), 9 Birds: mechanical, 46-47,67; in parks and gardens, 76, 84-85; falconry, 77 Blacks: eunuchs, 126, 151; servants, 141; Dependency and obedience, 172-75 pets (boys), 141-42; entertainers, 144, Destruction: in relation to power and creation, 7-10; of villages and old 149; humiliation of, 146-48; indulgence gardens, 19-20; as steps in learning and toward, 148-49 healing, 175-76 Bonsai, 61-63, 76, 77, 154 Dogs: percentage destroyed, 88; neutering Brown, Lancelot (1716-83), 20, 23-24, of, 88-89; loved and eaten, 93; 49,87 domestication and training of, 102-09; affection for, 109-14 Canetti, Elias: on the dignity of sitting, 13 Carlyle, Thomas ( 1795-1881 ): his racism, Domestication, 99-109, 164 Douglass, Frederick (1817?-1895): on 144 black children as pets, 148 Castration: animals, 88-89; humans, 126, 149-53 Eden (paradise), 63, 84-87, 126-27 Castrato, 152-53 Cato the Eider (234-149 B.C.): on slaves, Elephants: performing tricks, 74, 75; tameability, 100 135,136 191

192

Eunuchs: Chinese, 124, 151-52; black, 126, 151; Persian, 150-51 Farinelli (1705-82): castrate, 153 Fishes: goldfish, 20, 95-100; murena, 75; sea horse, 82 Fountains: Mughul India, 32, 39-40; Chinese, 38-39; Persian, 39; Roman, 40-41 ; Renaissance and baroque Italian, 41,42,43; French, 44,46; Austrian, 46 Frederick II (Holy Roman emperor 1194-1250): hunting and procession, 77 Gardens: French, 12, 19, 20, 23, 31, 35-36,43-44; Chinese, 19,24,25,27, 29-36, 38, 59-63,65, 66,86, 165-66; Japanese, 21, 61-63; Indian, 21, 32, 39-40; Roman, 22, 27, 40-41, 59; English, 22-23,-24, 47, 52, 57, 87; Italian, 27-28, 32, 41-43, 53-55, 56; Persian, 32, 39, 63, 66, 126; Egyptian, 50; Mexican, 77-78 Gray, Glenn: on delight in war, 8-9 Greek: nature and nature deities, 70; processions, 74; owl, 82; Alcibiades* dog, 110; Alexander's pets, 112-13; cruel mothers, 121; slaves, 134-35 Green architecture, 28, 32, 35, 55 Harem and seraglio, 123-26, 166 Hatshepsut (Queen of Egypt d. 1468): collected trees, 50; animals, 76 Hui-tsung (Chinese emperor 1082-1135): his artificial mountain, 24; distorted trees, 62-63, 65; bizarre rocks, 86 Humans: as machines, 2, 12, 15-16, 136; as laborers, 12,20,44,135-36; as goods and resource, 11-12, 14; as performing animals and spectacles, 15, 78-79; as pets, 115-31,139-42,153-59; as tools and appliances, 135-36; as prestige symbols, 137-39 Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1767-1835): on the appeal of irresistible force, 8 Humiliation: as distinct from physical pain, 4; forms of prostration, 13; of the poor, 15; of animals, 80; of male child, 121 ; of women, 125-26; of slaves and servants,

ÍNDEX 136-37, 142, 145-47; of Russian noblemen, 160-61 Hunting: primitive, 89-91, 95; as sport, 95, 103-04 Ibsen, Henrik (1828-1906): A Doll's House, 130-31 Immorality of gardens, 19 India: gardens, 21,32,39-40; caste system, 132-33 Insane asylum, 83-84 Jahangir (Mughul emperor 1569-1627): his cruelty, 21 Japan: gardens, 21, 61-63; goldfish, 95-96, 97; flower arrangement, 122 Kent, William (1684-1748), 23, 30 Kropotkin, Piotr (1842-1921): on Russian society, 16; slave orchestra, 138-39 Labyrinth and maze, 28, 30, 35, 52 Landscape painting, 4, 29-30, 60 Le Nôtre, André (1613-1700), 20, 30 Lewis, C. S.: on tame animals as "natural" animals, 69; courtly love, 127-28 Lions: stone, 33; golden (mechanical), 72; tame, 72, 74, 75; in zoo, 76, 82; in procession, 77; and Buddhism, 105 Lorenz, Konrad: on dogs, 102, 106-07 Louis XIV (1638-1715): his Marly estate, 19; desire for novelty, 20,36; "forcer la nature," 43-44; his dogs, 113 Love: pure, 1, 176; devouring, 9; of cattle among the Nuer, 91; courtly, 127 Machines and power: human, 2, 12, 15-16, 39; nonhuman, 39-40, 43-44, 45,46-47, 72 Mencius (ca. 371-288 B.C.): on the immorality of gardens, 19; on the nature of water, 37, 38 Miniaturization: gardens and plants, 5, 60-63; animals, 100-02; dwarfs, 154-60 Montaigne (1533-92): on Villa d'Este's fountains, 41; on Pratolino villa, 43; on water trick and mechanical toys, 46-47

INDEX Montezuma (Aztec emperor ca. 14801520): his zoo, 77-78 Names: of goldfish, 99; and humiliation, 126, 145-46; and power, 174 Nature: consumed by aristocrats, 14; dominance of, 2-3, 18; "natural" garden, 22-24,47; of water, 37; "forcer la nature," 43-44; fear of, 69-70, 91; women as, 122; vs. culture, 167-68; fascination for the unnatural, 169-71 Needham, Joseph: on Chinese fountains, 38-39

193

Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.): pride in his destructiveness, 9 Sexual abuse: animals, 99, 109; children, 117-18, 136; women, 123-26, 136, 139; dwarf-fools, 159 Sorokin, Pitrim: on love, 1 Sui Yang-ti (Chinese emperor 569-618): his toys, 17; garden, 20-21, 165-66

Theater and garden, 31-32, 166 Topiary art, 28, 35, 52-60 Toys: in Mongolian and Chinese courts, 17, 39; animated village (Le Rocher), 23; in European gardens, 46-47; Byzantine court, 72; toy dogs, 104-06; children as, Paiissy, Bernard (ca. 1510-89): on green 115, 117; women as, 130-31 ; blacks as, architecture, 28-29 144; and children's careers of power, Perényi, Eleanor: on flower fanciers, 51; 175 hedges, 62; the dark meaning of flower Training and taming of animals, 72-75, gardens, 126-27, 128 100, 107-08 Play and playfulness: world of, 2-4; in landscape gardens, 20, 29-36; with Tricks in the garden, 23, 34-36; water surprises, 46-47, 48-49 water, 38-39, 48-49; with plants, 47-60; in the breeding of dogs, 103-07, Tsu-hsi (dowager empress of China 1834-1908): her pleasure farm, 31; 109; with human pets, 141-45,154-55, breeding of Pekinese, 106 159-60; in relation to power, 163-67, 175 Pliny the Younger (ca. 62-113): his villas, United States of America: the grand tour and beggars, 15; topiary art, 59, 60; 40-41, 127; topiary art, 52; miniature hedge trimming, 62; New England's landscape, 60 forest, 69-70; museums, 78-79; insane Pope, Alexander (1688-1744): satire on asylum, 83-84; attitude to animal pets, topiary art, 57 88-89, 112; women's power over Pratolino villa, 43, 46 children, 116,120; too busy to be "dollProcession, 73, 74-75, 77, 137 wife," 130; slaves, 136-37, 146-49 Updike, John: on exultation in violence, 8 Racism, 133-34, 142-44 Rome: gardens, 22, 27, 40-41, 60; Versailles and Marly, 12, 20, 44, 45 procession, 74-75; circus, 78; dogs, Villa d'Esté, 41-43, 46-47, 48-49, 169 110; atrium (for women), 127; slaves, 135, 136, 137-38; "parasites" (laugh- Washburn, S. L.: on carnivorous psychology, 95 ter-makers), 159 Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919): on White, T. H.: his dog, 113-14 Wittfogel, Karl: on oriental despotism, 13 feeding Italian beggars, 15 Santayana, George: on destruction, 8; Women and flowers, 126-27 Women's power: over children, 115-16, predatory shepherds, 92 172; over men, 121-22, 127, 168, 172 Sartre, Jean-Paul: on aristocrats and nature, 14 Seneca (ca. 3 B.C.-A.D. 65): on vulgar Zeuner, F. E.: on domestication, 100-01 Zoos and menageries, 75-83 luxury, 10; animal tamers, 75